Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein)
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The amendment is nonsensical. The myth is that local authorities are sitting on huge tracts of land they do not want to develop, as opposed to not having the means to develop. The unused sites I have come across are not owned by local authorities or by housing associations. I can think of one housing association that has a site that is unused and there are still cattle grazing on it. It is not the end of the world and it is not a derelict site. If there is a problem with a site owned by the local authority, if a local authority member, a community group or a Member of the Houses contacts the local authority, he or she will get a resolution to that straight away. It is not fair to lump public bodies, which are already under serious pressure in terms of housing, which are dealing with homeless people walking through their doors every day of the week and which have huge pressure on their resources, in with developers who are sitting on pots of land waiting for it to go up in value. If local authorities have land, they want to, and they do, use it.