Gabrielle McFadden (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Secretary General and his colleagues for coming in and giving of their time. To turn to the land purchase that was not suitable for development, we were told that it has been dealt with but I am not 100% clear about it. Some 25 sites that originally cost in or around €37 million were rejected by the Department for inclusion in the scheme because they were deemed to be unsuitable. It is stated that the reasons for that were that some of the lands were not zoned residential, some of them were landlocked etc. This beggars belief. Why did the Department approve the original purchase of these sites if it was so obvious that they were not suitable for inclusion? Why would anybody approve the purchase of a site that was not zoned for residential use or that was landlocked? That seems mad in my book.

If we move on to 2007, it was obvious to everybody that we were hitting into very hard times and the price of land and so on was dropping, yet the greatest expenditure on land was in 2007 when the Department approved the purchase of land for more than €80 million, despite the fact that the market had turned so dramatically. Why would the Department purchase so much land at an inflated rate during a severe downturn in the market? What has happened since to those sites? What has happened to the 25 sites that were not included in the scheme because they were not suitable or they were not rezoned?