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. Conor O'Connell:
Absolutely. We understand HBFI is looking in particular at an equity product for the small- and medium-sized builders. We look forward to that but really it is the cost and the cost of finance has been one of the greater barriers.
Just on land, we have a zoning policy in Ireland. That policy came about as a result of the national planning framework that used the 2016 census to estimate the population growth and the amount of land that would be required to cater for that population growth. There is a constriction based on outdated data with the supply of land. That is the most fundamental problem with the cost structures in relation to land. The other issue with the cost structures in relation to land is because there is so little of it and so few services on the remaining land, the price point could be reduced significantly if we had greater land banks with greater infrastructure. That is not just for greenfield but for brownfield as well.
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