Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 26 June 2014

Public Accounts Committee

2012 Annual Report and Appropriation Accounts of the Comptroller and Auditor General
Chapter 4 - Vote Accounting
Chapter 10 - Central Government Funding of Local Authorities
Chapter 11 - Costs of Land Remediation
Vote 25 - Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government

11:10 am

Mr. John McCarthy:

Let us look back to 2010 to the start of the land aggregation scheme when the purpose of the scheme at that stage was to assist in the unwinding of a significant quantum of loans that had been taken out for the purchase of land. If we cast our mind back to the early part of the last decade, the local authorities were encouraged by central government to have an active land management strategy because at that point, we were active in a capital building programme. We were encouraging local authorities to try to access land almost ahead of the posse before it appreciated in value so that we were getting good value from it. Obviously the economy changed in 2007 and 2008 and as was said earlier, the orientation of our housing programme changed. In 2010 we introduced the land aggregation scheme-----