Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 4 November 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage
Unlocking Barriers to the Delivery of Housing: Discussion
2:00 am
Mr. James Benson:
To home in on the positivity and potential opportunity that comes with the UDZs, any policy would probably take 12 to 24 months before we start to see the full impact, but if you look to demonstration of opportunity and the likes of Seven Mills and Clonburris, as mentioned earlier, you start to get a flavour of what can happen when private industry and public bodies work together collectively, with the support of the approved housing bodies, the Land Development Agency and others. Within Seven Mills, from our own submission, the Senator can see clearly, in the space of less than three years, how people live in what is a truly mixed-entity, mixed-tenure community, and some of those will spend their third Christmas in that location in the space of just three years. That is a perfectly situated new town and new community in a transport-oriented development, making the best use of sustainable infrastructure in its current place. That shows the opportunity that we can have through urban development zones in future.
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