Ms Orla Hegarty:

They are a significant barrier. The figure of 4,000 available spaces for apartments in buildings between the canals came from the Dublin City Council planning department a number of years ago, so some of them may have been reoccupied since. These buildings can be turned around quickly. The infrastructure is there. More importantly, they are integrated into communities and already have services. People would have public transport, local shops and access to schools in many of these areas as opposed to waiting for new infrastructure to be built for suburban areas in the commuter belt, meaning they are much quicker to turn around. This relates to the capacity constraints we have discussed in the construction industry. The same number of people can turn around existing buildings much quicker than they can build new ones. In this way, we could use the available capacity in the construction sector much more strategically to turn around buildings properly. In some instances, it would address crisis areas on the social housing waiting lists. Given that families are favoured, many smaller households of one, two or three people are at the back of the queue for social housing and would be suited to this type of housing.