Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Will I take my full seven minutes at this point? I apologise to Mr. Coleman and his colleagues. I had business in the House so I am only getting the opportunity to come in here now, although I was monitoring some of the debate.

The breadth of this discussion can be divided into two pools. There are people on this committee who never believed the LDA should have the powers it has, did not support its establishment or funding, did not vote for it and have openly stated that they do not intend to allow it to continue with its job if they enter government. On the other side, there are those who supported the LDA but are expressing our frustration because we want more. We want its delivery and ambition to be scaled up, for landowners to work harder with it to unlock their lands, and for the LDA to do everything in its power to be the land development agency and deliverer of public housing on public lands that we wanted it to be. As such, it is with some regret that I use the votes of the people in my constituency to come in here and vote for the LDA when I do not have an LDA project in my constituency. This is not being parochial. Rather, it is about delivering housing for the people of my area. The boundary review might have saved the LDA slightly with the Cromcastle underpass project on a site close to my constituency – it is a good project – but there are more than 15 local authority-owned sites in Ballymun earmarked for development in the LAP and many of them are being developed by the local authority. I am surprised that the LDA did not have an opportunity to deliver on many of them, given that Dublin City Council and others have capacity constraints. AHBs and the local authority are involved in these large-scale sites, but the LDA is not. In particular, the Ballymun shopping centre site is one that the LDA was built for – it is complex, has multiple uses and is on the metro line. It is ideal for an LDA-type development, yet my understanding is that there has not been extensive engagement on it between DCC and the LDA. Is that something the LDA would consider? In the weeks since I met DCC, has there been further engagement to try to unlock the site’s potential? There are other sites across the constituency in respect of which I hope the LDA will be more proactive.