Ms Kathryn Meghen:

Historically, we have had this type of housing and we have it in many of our suburbs in all of our cities and many of our towns. In more recent times, there have not been guidelines to support the delivery of this type of housing. There is one key aspect to what the RIAI is putting forward. It is about the type of housing. Apologies that the link did not work and we will send that on to members. It is about the types and the scale of the housing but of critical importance is the place. It is about the quality of the urban fabric around those places. We see instances in some of the newer developments where we are seeing this type of housing, that the individual houses are being delivered but the landscaping, the public space and the roads around them are not of the quality that they could be and that would be seen in other European jurisdictions. Places in Sweden, Germany, or in the Netherlands have this really high quality. There is quite a number of places in the UK - but again, they are exceptions rather than supported by guidelines - that provide phenomenally good places to live. They use the existing infrastructure that is there, which obviously in terms of sustainability is critical, but it is high-quality development. It cannot be done by value engineering the schemes. That will not deliver what we are putting forward. The public realm has to be of a very high standard.