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

I welcomed the Minister's previous amendments that clarify the standing of the subsidiary designated activity companies and I welcome these amendments from him as well. We will support them.

With regard to amendments Nos. 145, 151 and 152, he seems willing to consider these in the context of a possible Report Stage amendment so I am happy to withdraw them at this stage. I reserve the right to reintroduce them.

I accept the Minister's point about the wording, "housing needs assessment", and this has been overtaken by the housing need and demand assessment. Will he consider the inclusion of that as well if he is tabling a Report Stage amendment on this? It will be such a key tool for determining the local authorities' housing plans. For the first time we will have an empirical evidence base indicating not only how many homes we need within a local authority over five years but we could have the information down to local electoral area and or in even finer detail. We will know how many of them should be one-bedroom, two-bedroom, three-bedroom of four-bedroom properties. It would be wholly inappropriate if the LDA in its plans to develop public land was not obliged to take into account that evidence base in the same way we expect local authorities, etc., to do so. Will the Minister give us a quick update on whether the LDA toolkit for local authorities will be ready by the end of the year? There has been some good progress on that. I am happy to withdraw those three amendments and reserve the right to reintroduce them.

That leaves the final two amendments in the group. The functions that the LDA will be given are a little different from other State agencies and more similar to the National Asset Management Agency. This agency will have control, albeit subject to Government approval, to very large tracts of public land. Having an additional layer of scrutiny with a report to be sent to the Oireachtas committee would be sensible. We often complain that simply laying something before the Houses of the Oireachtas or putting it on a website does not bring it to the attention of a busy committee. Therefore, I will press that amendment.

Likewise, having a timeframe for laying the report is important. The Government must make its decisions but we would like it to do so in a timely fashion. I will also press that amendment.