Dr. Kieran Feighan:

I thank Senator Kelleher for her comments. Regarding the example of her niece in Ballincollig, we would be very much ad idemregarding emphasising the role of sustainable development and the role the LDA can play in that regard. In our submission, we explicitly recommended a change to the Bill. We said that we believe that developing sustainable communities must be a fundamental objective of the LDA and that this should be included in head 8, section 2, in order that all of the subsequent development has that sustainable aspect.

As I have said, we are of a similar mind to the Senator. The homelessness crisis, as my colleague from the Royal Institute of the Architects of Ireland has said, must be addressed. The LDA can form part of the solution, which is one of the main reasons we welcomed it. If it is implemented properly, co-ordinates landbanks, and is able to identify underused land in public ownership and put it together with privately-owned land, we should, as a country, be able to address this issue in a timely fashion. We support the development of the LDA in that regard because it is clearly a mechanism that can help us to address some of these issues.