Dr. Cathal FitzGerald:

Section 2.5 of the report we published examines the funding mechanisms in place in 2019. I will mention some developments since then. The best thing we could say is that funding was not a barrier to TOD but in a way it is a bit like general funding for housing and other infrastructure. The State must be active and take decisions, have specific priorities and follow them, sometimes ahead of population demand. We looked at the national development plan, NDP, and the extent to which there were citable amounts of money in support of each of the national strategic objectives. The NDP states that a mechanism will be put in place to allow the uplift in the investment to be used to fund some of the other ancillary services that are needed. Land value sharing is now an option but I do not know if that is exactly the same as land value capture. It may be more to do with rezoning as opposed to the actual investment and uplift we get from that.

One of the things we mentioned was that transport infrastructure funding, such as under the urban regeneration fund, should be separated out from having to compete against other worthy demands for funding, such as improving the public realm projects and so on.

They should have their own separate basket in seeking that funding for urban regeneration, which I know is important to the committee. We made some suggestions on how existing funding could be targeted to support transport and compact growth but that there was also probably a need for more sophisticated mechanisms. We listed 14 potentially new mechanisms that are used internationally in Japan, Germany and London, which we think could be progressed by the State in collaboration with private sector providers, those who provide patient capital etc. These are listed in our report. There is something there but probably more needs to be done.