Mr. James Benson:

In one way, it probably does come down to the point Deputy Gould just made. Of that number of houses, a high percentage of the applications would have been for schemes within Dublin and a large proportion of those would have been for apartments. The viability issues that come with apartment delivery have been well documented. As a result, we have seen many mechanisms included in the Housing for All plan to bring forward that type of development. That begs the question as to whether we are building the types of homes that people and families want. Apartments make up a high proportion of the applications that have been made and the viability issues cause issues regarding the commencement of those units. They are, therefore, to be looked at within that context.

On the point made earlier, the national policy does push towards high-density compact growth in our urban centres. It is not necessarily high-rise development that is required to meet this. We should be looking at the type, make-up, size, location and scale of our units in order to ensure there is potential own-door access or potential to deliver high-density developments with the more traditional types of homes that people might favour, particularly given what we have seen-----