Lisa Chambers (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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I thank Ms Burke for attending and for her presentation. What are her members saying to her about the impact of the shortage of housing for their employees on their businesses? With regard to commuting times, how does Dublin compare to London? When I lived in London, anywhere within an hour of the city was considered a good commute and I travelled for approximately one hour door to door. That was normal. What does Ms Burke consider to be a short commute and to be reasonable? I very much agree with Deputy Barrett that we need to realise that people cannot live in the city centre next door to their workplace. It is acceptable and reasonable to think that in a city that will expand that people should live further outside and commute using good public transport links.

I agree with Ms Burke's comments on quality of life. She said that population growth in Fingal between the 2011 and 2016 censuses outstripped that of the five Connacht counties. As somebody who lives in Connacht, I take a different view. The lack of investment in our region has led people to migrate to Dublin who do not want to be there. My constituents do not want to spend two miserable hours each way in their cars travelling from Lucan to the city centre to work long hours with poor services. They would like to live elsewhere in the country if services, including proper transportation links, were provided. There is a balance to be struck. I understand Ms Burke's representations come from Dublin city and surrounding areas but we have a country to look after and capital investment needs to be levelled at all areas in the country. Part of the reason Dublin is experiencing such huge problems is we are forcing people to migrate to the city and we are not providing opportunities for them to work and live in other parts of the country. There are no jobs in those areas and they do not have the infrastructure to attract investment. With regard to the lack of infrastructure in the north west, Ms Burke would be shocked by the low level of investment in the region and how difficult it is to attract investment and create jobs for our people. It is something to think about. We are dealing with this issue as representatives of the entire country.

Issues such as the overheating of the housing market, high rents, traffic congestion and water supply shortages are the result of forcing people to live in Dublin. The chamber wants to push them into the city centre and expects that the current infrastructure will support that or can be built on and layered up to the point where people can live on top of each other. That is no life. Older blocks have much larger apartments but people are expected to live in little boxes in modern apartment blocks. It was reported earlier than 42 properties in a development in Clonskeagh sold out within one day ranging in price from €400,000 to €770,000. I am sure the €400,000 properties had no more than two bedrooms. We are telling people to live in tiny accommodation, like little shoe boxes, that is not fit for family growth. If transport links were extended to other parts of the country to allow people to live in bigger and better housing units that can accommodate families, we would do much better in assisting the Dublin area and reducing the overheating in the market. Those are my comments as someone who lives on the other side of the country where we see the issues a little differently.