Mr. John Coleman:

I thank Ms Behan. I will take the design changes first. I thank the Deputy for the question. It is a very important initiative that was brought through, in our view. The reality is apartments cost too much to deliver. That is having a big impact on affordability but it is also having a big impact on viability because the private sector, unsupported by the State, is largely absent from producing apartments. Usually it is the State that is supporting them and underlying them. Therefore, it is very important to tackle the issue of costs. We were very happy to support the Department in coming up with options to save and reduce costs. It depends scheme by scheme what the saving will be per apartment. For instance, basement carparks are very expensive to deliver, they can cost €50,000, €60,000 or €70,000 a space, so removing some basement parking could result in very large savings. If a scheme had a very high proportion of three-beds, given more optionality in relation to that, would result in a large amount of savings per apartment as well.

To answer the question and from talking anecdotally to developers, in some schemes they could indeed achieve the level of saving that was indicated by the Minister but it depends on how much would be offset scheme by scheme. However, the savings could be quite significant and will go quite a way towards improving viability of apartments.