Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to speak on the rest of the amendments I have tabled in this group. It may be helpful for Deputy McAuliffe if we deal with the issues he raises at the relevant section of the Bill because many of us would like to contribute to that discussion.

I wish to speak on amendments Nos. 41 and 213 now. One of the big concerns I have with the section of the Bill dealt with in amendment No.41 is that it is giving the LDA the power to develop master plans and designs. The LDA is not equipped to do that and has great difficulty in employing staff to do that job. It also has no democratically accountable mechanism for approving that. Local authorities are best placed, through their planning departments and their elected members, to develop plans for sites. We see that, for example, in SDZs and Local Area Plans, LAPs. There is some discussion among planning professionals about the innovative idea of local development zones, of which I am very much in favour. Why we would give a State agency that has no knowledge of the affairs in different local authorities, the housing markets and the local realities, a centralised power when it does not have any history of doing that and deny that to the agencies that the State has funded to provide those master plans over a long period of time is beyond me.

There is a value in talking about some developments in local areas because it allows us to talk about this in real time. One of the great values of Shanganagh was that the LDA did not master plan it. The local authority did the master plan on foot of consultation with elected members and so on. I see no set of reasons for the LDA being involved in master planning. That is a function of our planning authorities. They are equipped, skilled and have a track record in doing it which is why I am proposing that we remove that section.

The remainder of my amendments in this section go back to the central point that if the LDA is to be a residential developer, it should only develop affordable homes, that is, homes for affordable purchase, affordable rental and social rental. It should not be in the business of using very scarce and valuable public land to build homes that will sell for between €350,000 and €450,000 or in the case of the Dundrum central site, up to €500,000. That is not good housing policy and that is why those amendments are attempting to constrain the LDA, if it is residentially developing, to 100% affordable homes.