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

To expedite matters, I will go through all of my amendments in this group. They are three different types of amendment. My argument on amendment No. 198 is exactly the same as Deputy O'Callaghan's. There should not be an exemption from any provisions that seek to maximise the delivery of social and affordable housing on public land. Therefore, I endorse his argument. That is the reason we tabled the amendment.

Amendments Nos. 203, 208 and others seek to ensure 100% of the homes on public land are public homes. It is one of the core differences between most of the Opposition and the Government parties. I do not see any set of circumstances where unaffordable, open market-priced homes at €400,000 or €500,000 should be built and sold on public land. We need social and affordable homes for purchase and to rent. Therefore, that is the purpose of those amendments.

I have four amendments, Nos. 206, 211, 214 and 215, the latter two which were again submitted by the Association of Irish Local Government, AILG, representing the local government sector. All of those amendments seek to do the same thing, which is to ensure it should not be the Minister who decides the tenure mix on any site.

That is not the function of the Minister or his Department. In fact, they do not have the data to make those decisions. They are giving a methodology to local authorities, the housing needs demand assessment, HNDA, and any decision on tenure should be made at a local authority level based on the HNDA. That is the whole function of that exercise. This arbitrary setting of tenure percentages, often determined by the commercial interests of the developer rather than local housing need, is a really bad way to make housing policy. Therefore, each of these amendments provides for the role of the local authority and elected members in determining tenure mix. The implication is that all that would be done in the future on the basis of the housing needs demand assessment and the future city and county development plans, which is the correct evidence-based way, not for a Minister to arbitrarily pick figures out of a hat, or, indeed, the LDA or the LDA in a subsidiary with a DAC and a joint venture with a private sector interest determining those percentages on the basis of investment decisions which, for example, I am concerned may happen in the Dundrum central site. I will not withdraw any of the amendments, irrespective of what the Minister is promising to come back with on Report Stage because from everything he has said to date, I believe that his amendments will still leave open the possibility of some level of unaffordable open-market price homes of €400,000 to €500,000 being delivered on public land and that is not what that land should be used for.