Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

No, I am pointing out that the LDA is part 2 of the disastrous policy pursued with NAMA. It is exactly the same policy and will have exactly the same disastrous consequences at a time when we should be moving in precisely the opposite direction.

Shanganagh Castle is proof positive of that. If the Government had simply provided the local authority, which had signalled its desire to build public housing on that land, with the funds to do so we would have public and affordable housing on the Shanganagh Castle site now. The funding was not forthcoming because the Government always had a plan, of which the LDA is the culmination, to open up that public land bank, that particular site that was publicly-owned, to private finance and private developers. The consequence of that is we do not know whether the affordable housing will be affordable. There has also been a chronic delay in actually delivering anything and a sod being turned on that site. Why is that? It is because the Government has involved private financiers in the equation and they must make a profit. The Government has been trying to square the circle of how to deliver affordable housing on public land and make a profit for private financiers and, of course, it is a very difficult circle to square. The Government would not have to square it were it not trying to dispose of the land and involve those private, for-profit interests.