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

The past hour or so has been incredibly useful. Adding all the various policy tools that have been outlined, including the URDF and Town Centre First and so on, I take my perspective from the towns and villages in my community. Many are what might be called urban villages. I am thinking of areas like Finglas and towns like Ballymun. They could be replicated in places like Raheny and new communities in Donaghmede and so on. The question is where those urban villages fit in the policy framework.

For example, with Town Centre First, do urban villages fall under its remit? Are they eligible to apply? Dublin City Council has not made applications under that scheme. The URDF, a large amount of very welcome money, has primarily gone to the inner city area and it is often used for large citywide projects. We must look to the future expansion of housing, such as that on the Oscar Traynor Road lands, with nearly 1,000 homes, and the Ballymun local area plan, which has nearly 2,000 homes. The master plan for private land on the Jamestown Road site would accommodate more than 1,000 homes as well. How do we retrofit existing communities with facilities that are needed for those new homes? Adding more homes into those communities that in many cases have already experienced a dearth of community facilities would only compound problems.

In particular I am thinking of the community at Santry, which has seen much private sector development, all on private land. It has two large council areas on either side and perhaps it has missed out on some service provision that may exist in areas where the city council may have more of a presence. Will the witnesses piece together a plan that I can beat up Dublin City Council with? I can say that tools are available to these towns and what the council should apply to.

I echo the point made by Senator Boyhan on the accountability for who is deciding what applications for URDF come before the Department. Those decisions are largely made by officials. My understanding is there has not been any serious democratic scrutiny of which applications come before the Department for the scheme, which is an issue. The Ballymun local area plan is a Dublin City Council project and it has been on its books since 2017. All the land is owned by Dublin City Council. Despite this, the council did not put forward the area for the URDF. There is something wrong in that respect when there is such an obvious need to tackle disadvantage and at the same time address the question of new and affordable housing and cost rental. I appreciate there is much to get through there.