Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

In the context of what I outlined, does the Minister of State accept there is a problem, which is that most new builds in Dublin are apartments? It was 72% last year. The bulk of them are not available for individuals or families to buy. Does the Minister of State accept it is a problem that a minority of people who want to right-size to apartments in communities where apartments go up are not able to? Their only option would be to give up the security of homeownership and rent insecurely, which they are not going to do at exorbitant rents. Does he accept, with Government policy promoting compact growth, that not having this tenure choice is a real problem undermining that policy? Does he accept that if people can only get the tenure of their choice - homeownership - by moving out of urban areas into commuter belt areas or wherever, that flies in the face of sustainable development? If we want buy in to sustainable development, we must have tenure choice. Is the Government arguing this will not be done on the basis that it will not meet the needs of institutional investors? Should we not, in planning, be looking at the needs of families, individuals and communities? Should that not come first in planning, rather than being trumped by the needs of institutional investors? A huge part of public policy in Ireland is investment by governments from the 1920s onwards. You can debate whether this was the right or wrong place to put investment, but a vast amount of public resources went into land redistribution and homeownership. That is now being undone. Should our planning system not be able to have that level of choice? Is the only choice people in urban areas will have with new builds in the future going to be paying high and exorbitant rents to investment funds? Is it appropriate to change that in our planning system?