Verona Murphy (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Chairman said "confetti at a wedding". A lot of weddings will be cancelled at the rate we are going. I want to go back to the density issue. Let us forget about the schemes. Approximately 6,000 apartments that are on the table are going to be subsidised. The only site sold in Dublin that I have been able to find of late was 5.2 acres and achieved a price of €60 million, at density levels of 100 dwellings per hectare. That works out at a site value of €126,000 per apartment. If someone builds five blocks comprising 500 apartments on 5 acres, that works out at €126,000 per apartment. The apartment itself is going to cost €100,000 to €125,000 more to build than any house, so that is €250,000 for building at high density.

The Department's insistence on a planning policy dealing with compact development will bankrupt this country. We could build 6,000 three-bedroom houses outside of the M50 where the balance of that money could be used to develop transport infrastructure in any county where lower densities are not only viable but what is wanted. People do not want apartments. The 440 acres that would be required to build 6,000 houses would cost somewhere in the region of €250 million - that is a generous estimate - versus €6 billion, if we were to calculate at Savills rates the cost of the land to build the 6,000 apartments in city environments.

The witnesses seem to believe, given they referred to it in response to Deputy McAuliffe, that people need to live in this 15-minute city idea where services would be cheaper and would be provided. They do not, and people are voting with their feet. They are moving outside of Dublin to be able to afford a home they want to purchase and own themselves. Nobody is going to purchase apartments built at a starting cost of €250,000 before a block is laid. If we were to calculate the cost of the 6,000 apartments, we would only subsidise the purchase of the land, because the Department’s €750 million will achieve €125,000 per apartment of a grant or subsidy. How long are we going to do that for when we have an alternative? That is why the UK moved away from compact development.

Mr. Doyle has a choice here. He is the Secretary General and Mr. Hogan is sitting in front of him. They can choose to change our planning policy and save the taxpayer billions of euro, or they can continue with it and end up bankrupting the country. That is where we are. It is €6 billion to build apartments in city environments where we do not have infrastructure to support apartment-building outside of Dublin. In Wexford, we do not even have a train service. We have a train that is probably the biggest polluter in the country and it does not even run to schedule. Where would we be going putting people into high-rise apartments? What would we be doing? There is no transport infrastructure and it will not follow. The Department is following a pipe dream. An ideology was developed by the person who was the head of planning policy and now happens to be our Planning Regulator, and nobody has the balls to stand up to him and say this has to change.