Ms Colette Bennett:

There were many issues in that one comment. The cost of building has not expanded all that much. For example, an A-rated three-bedroom unit in Ballymun was delivered at a building cost of €230,000. The cost of provision of these houses is not on the construction side, although much more could be done on procurement. It is more about the land. That is why our ten-point plan for dealing with housing mentions not selling off State land capable of residential development use, because retaining the cost of land and making sure local authorities are enabled to develop it for residential units would actually reduce costs overall.

I feel very strongly about the issue of ghettoisation because it is something that is particularly levied at social housing developments or social and affordable housing. We think and hear about these areas becoming ghettoes. That does not need to be the case. In fact, a significant amount of work on this, and the research that backs this book, was done in the 1990s and early 2000s by Professor Tony Fahey. Ghettoisation has nothing to do with houses or people but has to do with the surrounding infrastructure. That is not alone education, roads and shops but also community policing, mental health services and community healthcare networks. Things that are taken for granted in more affluent areas as part of a housing development should be applied to social and affordable housing developments to build sustainable communities. We have seen very good examples of it in Limerick. We need to see more of them.

On the push for passive housing, we have seen a push for greater retrofitting particularly in the economic plan but also in budget 2021. That absolutely needs to happen. We have more than 200,000 houses throughout the country, currently, in the lowest energy efficiency, F and G, bands. They need to be retrofitted and that will come at a cost. We have proposals on how that cost should be factored in, whether it is through loans or paying it off through utility bills. Again, when we look at making grants available for retrofitting they tend to be quite regressive in that they benefit higher income households, which can afford up-front costs. This is opposed to those who desperately need to have their housing retrofitted, need lower utility bills and who are still probably on solid fuel central heating systems, but who cannot afford that chunk of up-front fees to be able to apply for a grant to repay it. That is absolutely needed.

Building newer homes passively will save in the long term on having to retrofit those homes. It is a saving over time. I understand costs are higher but, as I said, developments in Ballymun, for example, were able to build at an A-rate and still provide three-bedroom housing for €230,000.