Professor Michelle Norris:

On the remit of the LDA, it has expanded from the original idea. In my view, the expansion has enabled the LDA to fulfil functions that are not being fulfilled by other organisations. The LDA is doing very large developments. I did not hear the previous session but I assumed those people outlined very large-scale developments that would be difficult for other organisations to carry out. I also think the LDA does extremely important work to regenerate complex brownfield sites like the sites in Limerick that were mentioned where the LDA has assembled land owned by different providers. There is not really capacity elsewhere to do that. It is very important that we do not have different organisations all trying to fulfil the same remit. The land banking function is not really being fulfilled by anybody. It is very challenging to set up an organisation as large as the LDA - I think the LDA has done a superb job in many ways - but its land banking function is really critical, so that definitely needs to be prioritised.

On turnkey purchases, that is quite a complex issue because there is a debate about whether a lot of these developments would go ahead if they were not bought-----