Mr. Michael Kelleher:

Project Tosaigh and Croí Cónaithe are new initiatives for the Government that are welcomed by the industry. We are starting to negotiate with the LDA and others to bring it through a process but it takes time. It is very new. The other thing is that the LDA has a mandate for 5,000 units. It will not deal with all the units. On top of that, the Government has now brought forward the initiative around the cost-rental model, which is a new model that will deal with the cost inflation that is taking place and the debt requirement to fund these projects. Again, this will activate but we need to be careful.

They cannot deal with all the planning permissions around the country in the key urban areas. As Mr. O’Connell said, we need to get a number of these initiatives off the ground and see that they are working. In addition, we need to look at compact growth. Outside of Dublin city, Cork, Limerick and Galway, we can design compact growth own-door units where we can get the densities, but with much smaller back gardens. Ultimately, if you live in an apartment, you have 7 sq. m of balcony space as private space. That is all you have. Whereas with compact growth, you could have multiples of that and yet create the density, so it is more sustainable.

We need to be careful of the unintended consequences of saying that if someone gets planning permission and they do not build on it, they should be taxed. All that will do is make it more unviable. Just remember the other issue, which is that some of these sites were bought before the mooting of this new tax. Therefore, they were bought at a price and a time. Unfortunately, all that will do is create a situation where banks and funders could put a builder into a difficult financial position with the funder because of the unintended consequence of a 30% tax on top.