Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

First, I must apologise to the other witnesses with whom I have not engaged today. I very much appreciate the submissions they have made and have no doubt that this committee will try to include as many as possible in its final report. I am using my time to question the Department but perhaps if we had more modules, we might have been able to call witnesses to separate meetings.

I wish to question Ms Graham on two specific areas. Urban regeneration is incredibly important for the delivery of housing, which I previously referenced. One of the great lessons from the 1960s and 1970s is that community facilities and the physical infrastructure of communities did not always follow through. One of the concerns I have with Housing for All, both for existing and new communities, is that the supply of housing will happen but it is not clear that we will be able to fund and prioritise community facilities in those areas. I ask Ms Graham to outline how the Department intends to do that in two places, namely greenfield sites where we are effectively building new towns and in traditional communities. The latter are really concerned about new houses coming on stream. In Santry, for example, a lot of residents are very fearful that there will be an increase in housing supply but that they will not necessarily get new community facilities to match that. I use the term "community facilities" in its broadest sense to include schools, health centres and community resources like halls and so on. How will the Department use that element of urban regeneration to match the housing supply?