Mr. Philip Jones:

I have just one point, which I made when we were before this committee on another occasion. After the crash in 2010, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform basically told every State body, including each local authority, that it had to get approval before it could employ anybody. We are not now in the middle of the era of the troika, so why can a local authority not take on four planners without going cap in hand to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, which must then go cap in hand to the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, if it has the money? One of the suggestions we made, which I believe is reflected in the committee's report, is that the real cost of dealing with a planning application should be covered by the planning application fee. In fairness, Mr. Cussen of the Office of the Planning Regulator stated in front of this committee that the fee for dealing with a single housing unit is €65 and that it has not changed since 2001. The actual cost is about ten times that. If we had full cost recovery for all planning application fees so the local authority would get a bit more money, it would help. If a local authority has the money and needs the staff, it should be allowed, without going cap in hand to central government, to take on those staff. I am aware there is a bigger issue concerning how many graduate from the schools but always having to ask central government when one wants staff to do one's job seems to be a hangover from the days of the troika. We need to get rid of it. If the local authority has the money, why should it not be allowed to get the staff it needs to do its job? That is one approach, but I acknowledge Dr. O'Leary's point that we need to get more people to get the jobs. Both approaches are needed.

There is one thing in the general scheme that might help with the social element, that is, the idea that a local authority could purchase land compulsorily and hand it to a builder to build housing on it. It should not be a profit-making builder but a small builder. Many of the firms now operating at public level are larger firms. There is no reason a local authority could not buy a small site at less than the market value and then give it, by way of licence, to a builder who would build the houses and sell them on the open market, undercutting the private sector elsewhere. Thus, you would get private houses in the area. If the profit motive is removed, it might result in housing at the infill sites in the locations being talked about. That is one suggestion.