Mr. Paul Hogan:

There is a range of measures which have recently been applied. The first thing from a planning perspective is the compact development guidelines, which review density and housing standards to enable more own-door-type housing to be produced in a wider range of scenarios throughout the country. There is also a range of other supports, such as the first home and help-to-buy schemes and, indeed, the LDA , with its own direct delivery through Project Tosaigh focused more on higher-density schemes. There is a degree of support there for compact growth.

Moving on to the NPF and the transport-orientated development concept, and building on what was asked earlier, the amendments we brought forward include the NESC definition of transport-orientated development. We certainly believe that, particularly around the big cities, where there is a challenge to step up large numbers of affordable housing units, TOD is a very important way to achieve that as it overcomes some of the viability constraints within urban areas. That said, we also believe some TOD sites could be redeveloped urban areas too. The concept of being able to build more places like Clonburris or Adamstown, using, for example, the urban development zone concept we introduced in the planning Act, more rapidly, with a wide range of housing types, many of them affordable, is a very significant spatial development or planning response to the need that is identified for a step-up or ramp-up in the number of housing units.