Paul McAuliffe (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)
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There seem to be two challenges here. One is to tell the witnesses how supportive we are of it and the other is to name all the community gardens in each of our constituencies. I will try to live up to the challenge previous colleagues have set.

I think everyone in the room agrees with this because of how important it is and because of practical experience. I do not think that is a new, woke or middle class thing. This has been with us for a long time. My grandfather had what we used to call a plot in Dunsink. Many rural people who came up to live in the new suburbs in Dublin often had access to these types of plots. In his case, it was something to help supplement the income of the family. When it came to March each year, the whole house would be turned into a shamrock-bagging operation or there would be potatoes - whatever we happened to be doing. It has been with us for a long time.

The second thing is that we have all seen the practical benefits of these often unused and underutilised pieces of land being turned into a community gain. In some ways, the fight is part of the formation of the group; not that one would leave it there for that reason. I have seen very strong groups emerge out of it, however. Santry Demesne is probably one of the strongest groups in my area. It is one of the most independent as a result but it is also supported by the local authority. I was involved in the Ballymun farmers' market and also in setting up Greenview community garden, which the witnesses referenced, with the Tús scheme. I can, therefore, see all the benefits.

Let me talk about some concerns I have because the idea of community markets is a similar area. Increasingly, casual trading is not used for the provision of community markets but instead, it is done under an events licence. The reason for that is the regulations and responsibilities around casual trading are quite onerous. They can be restrictive and do not allow the market to express that personality Mr. McCormack talked about. One fear I have is that we could over-regulate the space and interfere with the creativity of the gardens and allotments. I wonder whether legislation is necessarily the answer for the operational side. We should be fearful of that.

One example in Ballymun that is really useful is Muck and Magic community garden, which is brilliant. Ballymun was unique because we had sites that we were retaining for owner-occupied homes to provide a better mix in the community. Lands were set aside until that came on stream. The "meanwhile" use has ended up being approximately a decade. Now that those tools have come on board with both cost-rental and affordable purchase housing, we are going to move Muck and Magic community garden, with its full agreement and co-operation, over to the other side of Ballymun where we are building an affordable purchase site in order that we can build a cost-rental site on the Muck and Magic community garden site. Deputy Ó Broin is right; public housing policy is really key here. What we want to do on the Balbutcher Lane site is to go much further and develop a city farm, which is a whole different kettle of fish.

Housing policy is an area in which we should be looking at legislation. On the Balbutcher Lane site, we are looking at the 20% open green space as being one opportunity to protect land. This comes back to the question of our definition of open green space and biodiversity. I encourage the witnesses heavily to engage with the Citizens' Assembly on Biodiversity Loss. We have acres of parkland that is beautifully landscaped grass. Much of it could easily be transferred for smaller-use plots. Many of our public parks could easily accommodate more allotments. They are already owned by the council and insurance and all those issues are covered. If one is covered in potato plants rather than grass, does that detract from the public domain? We need to have a conversation about that.

Dublin City Council did a very good persuasion exercise with our Tidy Towns group where it said that if we do not cut the grass, that is not a bad thing. That is not the council letting the Tidy Towns down, it is about increasing biodiversity. Now, there is a fine line there as well. However, the people it persuaded first were those in the Tidy Towns groups because they would be the first people to telephone the council to say it did not cut the grass and, therefore, let the place go. Instead, the council empowered them and gave them training as pollinators and so forth.

We need to have a huge debate around our public park space and how we could better use that. That does pose a challenge for ownership. Sometimes community gardens are about giving people ownership but the downside of that is that they can go from being inclusive to exclusive. Councils are notoriously afraid of giving anything more than a licence to anybody because a committee can become defunct and a space can then be locked out from the public rather than locked in.

I would be supportive and we could do much good work in this space as a committee. The problem is that we keep coming up with ideas on what to do thanks to witnesses coming in. My fear is that we could over-regulate them. If we even look at Mud Island community garden, would Dublin City Council ever have given that to Community Gardens Ireland if it thought it was getting it permanently?