Mr. Cormac O'Rourke:

I will answer the Senator by saying that perhaps I did not make myself as clear as I might have done. If we look at Shanganagh, the social housing component on that is 30%. The Part V element is something we will work on with the local authority. In some cases, like Shanganagh, we are going to try to make the overall provision of public housing more efficient by procuring in a single contract or a number of contracts that are complementary to each other. We are trying to use economies of scale to provide both social and affordable housing.

I go back, however, to the point that the LDA’s role in the long term is on affordable housing and that it does not have a role in social housing except insofar as the Act allows, which is the provision of services to local authorities. The LDA is very much subservient to the local authority in the provision of those social houses. That is a model I am very familiar with from Transport Infrastructure Ireland, TII. The local authority is the road authority and TII is the service provider. I see the LDA's role in exactly the same way. The local authority is the housing authority and is focused on social housing. Our job is for affordable housing.

The land bank database is part of our obligations under the Act. We will keep working on it. Any lands that are transferred to us, we will work on in accordance with the instructions. The benefit of the land bank database is to highlight what lands are in State ownership. That has real merit both as a service to public representatives and to other policymakers where they can bring that to the attention of Government.

On the Housing for All output and affordable homes, it does not envisage that the LDA will deliver all of those. We will grow to a position where we are delivering between a third and a half of the houses. There is affordable house provision envisaged for other entities such as the local authorities, the approved housing bodies, AHBs, and under Part V obligations. The Senator may appreciate I am only reading myself into this so I am by no means an expert and it will take some time.

On the Senator’s point in respect of sustainable housing and 15-minute cities, I would be equally uncomfortable if that was to lead to the kind of segregation she talks about. That is not what we are about. The LDA is about public service and is not about segregation or matters that would be deeply offensive to me personally.