Mr. P.J. Ryan:

We need to be careful we do not demonise demolition either. We have talked a lot about infrastructure emissions. There is a lot of research into it which UCD and the IGBC have done. Sometimes we focus very much on the building itself and forget about the infrastructure. When we are talking about city centres where we have all the infrastructure, we have to maximise what that site can deliver and sometimes that will involve demolition. If you do not build and maximise there, say with an apartment block, then inevitably you are going to be building out in a greenfield, which needs a lot more infrastructure. It is not black and white. It is not like demolition is evil and needs to be demonised. If best use is not being made of a site which has all the infrastructure and transport links and everything else near it, then demolition might be the best option. I just get the impression we are saying here demolition is almost banned. We have an issue with dereliction in the city and counterintuitively we might be driving development out to the greenfield sites if we are starting to say demolition is this bad thing. I worry about that. We should be careful not to end up with the wrong outcome at the end of this, in that we are building out in greenfield because it is way easier. I feel like city centre sites are not getting the full advantage of embodied carbon in their calculations so they are being punished slightly and greenfield sites are almost getting a free pass. We just need to be careful on that.