Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party)
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I thank Mr. Coleman. We are just out of time on that slot. Moving on to the second Green Party slot, I will take it. Mention was made earlier of a quarterly report and performance indicator report. All of us on the committee would welcome that. It will be in the interest of the committee, but equally in the public interest. Therefore, we would welcome anything that could be done to advance that aspect and regular updates for the committee. The LDA has, indeed, always been willing to engage with the committee and we will continue to do so.

Report No. 150 from NESC on land management was referred to earlier. A statement at the start of that report on housing and land-use policy specifies that:

Ireland must bring about a fundamental change in its system of urban development, land management and housing provision. It must evolve from a speculative and highly cyclical system to a permanently affordable, stable and more sustainable system of housing.

I do not think that anyone could disagree with that statement. The report goes on then to recommend that we:

establish the Land Development Agency (LDA) on a statutory footing as a matter of urgency, with an enhanced mandate, including to provide land for social housing, and equip it with a planning role and the tools to assemble land and engage in direct development (including CPO, master-planning, and land value capture); and create specialist teams [to engage with] local authorities, [and in those] complex tasks around procurement, [and] site-unblocking.

The report also refers to delivering cost rental at scale. The Government has now done that. We have established the LDA on that statutory footing through the Land Development Agency Act 2021 and the Affordable Housing Act 2021. We have also increased the budget of the LDA and the budget for the Housing for All policy. We now expect delivery in that context. In that regard, I know there are capacity constraints all across the construction sector, from the design to building stages. Is the LDA facing similar pressures in recruiting staff or with construction costs? Will that impact the timelines and forecasts that the witnesses presented to us today?