Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. McCormack and Ms Foreman for their presentation and report. I think they will find a receptive audience in the committee. We have all experienced good community gardens and allotments, but also the challenges they face. In my constituency, we had to threaten legal action against the diocese, which was attempting to relinquish land which actually belonged to South Dublin County Council and was in use as a valuable community garden in Balgaddy. Thankfully, it is still there and vibrant. It is run by community volunteers and does a huge amount of work with young children who, in a built-up urban area, would never otherwise get the opportunity to get their hands dirty on seeds and plants. We have some small pocket community gardens like in St. Mark's in north Clondalkin, where the council has been proactive supporting the local community. However, volunteering and resourcing it has always been a challenge. It depends. In fairness to South Dublin County Council, we have some good community gardens like Corkagh Park, which proved successful.

The challenge is that local authorities do not always have land in the areas where it is needed, acquiring land is expensive and in the absence of that legal framework and Government policy, it is easy for councils to do less rather than more. The strongest arguments the witnesses are bringing is not why community gardens are a good thing, but why we need that national policy and legislative framework. I fully support that.

We can consider in private session on Tuesday whether to write to the Minister on foot of Community Gardens Ireland's recommendations and ask him to actively consider them. That would be positive. If the Minister was here and receptive, as I am sure he would be, to developing a State-wide policy to act as an overarching framework to push our local authorities on a bit better, what would the witnesses ask to see in it?

The good social housing projects in the early era of the State, whether by Cumann na nGaedheal, Fianna Fáil, Clann na Poblachta or the Labour Party, were all deliberately designed as garden villages. The reason so many of our grandparents have long, thin back gardens is they were all allotments. They were designed for people who grew their own vegetables. It is not like we are doing something new; we are trying to remind people that this is how our public housing was developed in the past. Given that it is always easier for the State to lead with its own projects, are there examples of other jurisdictions, whether Scotland, Wales or elsewhere in Europe, where, as a matter of principle, they fully integrate into public housing design and delivery a required amount of space for allotments or for people to have individual green-growing spaces? There are some wonderful social housing projects being developed in England where, instead of having entries and alleyways behind, they have open communal spaces with community gardens that people share for growing vegetables and flowers. Is there any additional information about that which the witnesses can share with us? We would be particularly interested in that.