Mr. Brian Moran:

On the concept of land value sharing, certainly paying development levies, impact levies, makes a lot of sense. As I understand it, where it is used it will be replacing those levies. We evaluate many opportunities to develop and in many cases we come up with zero land residual values on high-density sites. Rezoning the land might actually reduce its value. Collecting some of that in certain locations may be wishful thinking. That is not the case in Dublin docklands or certain other locations.

I come back to the 70,000 units because I am not sure that is the right number. I have not seen a breakdown anywhere to show it to me. For example, 27,700 SHDs have not been commenced and 13,000 have been quashed, 1,800 have been withdrawn, 14,000 are still in the courts. So, roughly 27,000 are not being built currently, 27,000 are stuck or quashed in judicial review. That leaves about 18,000 which are probably a one-off developments and smaller schemes around the country not commenced. According to the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service, IGEES, about 61% of the 27,000 that are not commenced are apartments. It comes back to the viability issue. Many of them will be apartments in locations on the edges of towns where they just do not stack; they cannot be built. It may well be that the LDA or Project Tosaigh steps in and empowers them and gets them going. That is one of the challenges and why a lot of the stuff is not being built at the moment. I track these things through websites rather than having a definitive answer. I think that 70,000 number is loosely thrown around, but when it is broken down, many of those are units that are being quashed in judicial review.