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

I am trying to get over to the Finance Bill shortly so I will not be here to move any further amendments. I am not being rude.

I will say two things on this section. First, we had an amendment ruled out of order but the Minister should take it on board because his colleagues in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown are concerned and there was a vote at Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council in relation to the staff resources that would be necessary in order to deal with large-scale residential development. They will write to the Minister about this. To put it starkly, the officials in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown said there could be cuts in other services because of the staff resources that would be necessary to deal with large-scale residential developments. That is pretty serious stuff. As a consequence, the councillors, including the Minister's Fianna Fáil colleagues, unanimously approved a motion to request that the additional staff resources be provided to local authorities to deal with large-scale residential developments. Otherwise, this could have serious knock-on effects for other services. The Minister should take that seriously. It is not just me but everybody in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and the Minister will probably find the same elsewhere.

The second point links to some of my earlier amendments. I do not see why we need anything that is not affordable at the moment. At the very least, there should be a higher requirement for public and affordable housing in any large-scale development than 20%. We are in a bad state and are limited in the construction resources that we have, including construction workers. There is only so many people to build stuff at the moment. Everything has to be thrown at upping the amount of affordable and public housing we deliver, given the place we are in. There should be no LRD process where there is not a requirement for an additional minimum of, I would say, 50% social and affordable to try to address the housing crisis. I do not have an amendment in on that but I will put one in on Report Stage to the effect that there should be a higher obligation for social and affordable housing linked to any consideration of a large-scale residential development.