Mr. John Coleman:

I am happy to do this on an ongoing basis. The working relationship with local authorities, including councillors and the executive, is of primacy to us. If we look at the successes of and progress made by the LDA to date, much of it has been on local authority sites. It is hugely important to us. We see ourselves very much as a service provider to local authorities in this respect.

On transparency and monitoring, performance management will be very important to us. We have scheduled regular board meetings every month this year. Now that the Act has confirmed the LDA's mandate and a new board has been commenced to be built up over time, we will have a strategy that will be published later in the year. This will give a clear indication of the LDA's strategic priorities and goals. Mr. O'Rourke and I have sought to outline in a transparent way our initial views on what is possible from the LDA in the coming years and we will formalise it in a strategy document later in the year. I would welcome the opportunity to engage with the committee on this basis and regularly report back.

Deputy Higgins touched on wider transparency of the State lands database and land access. Approximately 98% of all State lands, be they owned by Government agencies, commercial semi-State bodies or local authorities, are all mapped on our website. As the Deputy can imagine it is very extensive but we are in a very detailed process of distilling this and working out what is feasible from the land. Obviously this is very much focused on contributing to housing development. It is on our website for a reason, which is to show public and elected representatives what is in the State land bank and what could be possible and to provoke discussion and debate on it. Transparency is very important and publication on our website of the database map with a lot of detailed information is a good first step towards it. It will be brought together by our report to the Government on State lands later in 2022.

On the budget, we are comfortable that we are fully funded for our activity for the coming years. No one has said to us there are particular obstacles to budget or finance availability. I am sure we will speak to the Government if it ever becomes an issue. The Government has given us additional funding through Housing for All and we are confident we are pretty well funded for the coming years to deliver on our ambitions.

With regard to modular housing I totally agree that in the medium term it has to be a way to alleviate some of the pressures in the industry at present and to tackle some of the productivity issues that Mr. O'Rourke outlined in his opening statement. Among the big barriers for Ireland as an island nation in advancing more on modular housing have been scale and accessing the supply chain from overseas. Perhaps this has also been the case with regard to a coherent delivery capability for modular or factory output on the island here. One of the positive things about the LDA, and particularly the cohesive approach with local authorities as perhaps the main State source provider of homes collectively, is that together we can achieve scale and perhaps justify greater efficiencies through procurement and even production facilities in Ireland.