John Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We have heard a lot of excuses today. Anybody looking in on this meeting will be tearing their hair out. I am certainly tearing out what little hair I have left on my head. It seems to be excuse after excuse. The Government can only come up with policy interventions. We cannot do this on our own. We need local authorities to deliver under the schemes that are in place.

To paraphrase Mr. O’Hara's response, he said essentially that we should be dealing with greenfield sites as well as pursuing this mechanism to deliver housing. Nobody is suggesting we should only go through this mechanism. It has to be both. However, it seems from the responses that witnesses are saying this area is not worth the effort and it is much is easier to deliver units on greenfield sites. I just do not accept that. It takes a lot of work but we can unlock developments. We need to utilise best practice. Louth County Council has utilised CPOs to great effect and Waterford City and County Council has utilised the repair and leasing scheme to great effect. We need to take best practice from those areas and apply it across all local authorities without exception.

What targets do Dublin City Council and Waterford City and County Council have for the repair and lease scheme for 2022, 2023 and 2024? Will the witnesses comment on the commercial aspect, on which Deputy McAuliffe touched? Regulations are in place which exempt, in the case of a certain number of classes of buildings, proposals to change from commercial to residential use from planning requirements. That does not include pubs and restaurants. Mr. Grimes mentioned that a number of derelict former pubs had been brought back into productive use. I have seen this personally. People are living in such units as we speak. Do the councils agree that we should extend that exemption to include former pubs and restaurants that have been derelict and vacant for a number of years?