Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 23 September 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage
Affordable Housing: Discussion
2:00 am
Mr. John Coleman:
Sure. In June, the Government made a decision that there was going to be an alteration and expansion of the LDA's mandate. That included operating outside geographical areas we currently operate in. It is correct to say that. We are giving consideration as to how best we can do that at the moment. There are roughly 50 towns with a population of greater than 10,000 at the moment. We have mapped all State land in the country on our own, which is publicly available on our website. We are looking in detail outside the main city areas at which land in these larger towns could be best and most quickly accessed to deliver homes. We are doing that exercise at the moment. From an operational perspective, we are also in consultation with the local authorities and the Department on how best we could service these areas. The danger is that if we spread ourselves too thin, we might risk achieving nothing, whereas if we focused on some high-potential areas we might achieve more. We are working through that at the moment. We are consulting the Department on it and I expect, certainly within the next two months or so, that we would have a clear plan on where we are going in the non-city areas, if we can call them that.
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