Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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Dr. McQuinn indicated that we need a high proportion of social and affordable housing, given all the things we are talking about. Is the proportion the Government is envisaging high enough? I would advocate that we do not need any more unaffordable housing at all because there is a trade-off in the context of every site that is available. With a particular site which is zoned for housing development and in light of limited amounts of labour, if any of that available labour is taken to build something that is at the higher end and is therefore unaffordable, it must be at the expense of the same labour and the same land being deployed to develop social and affordable housing. Is that a reasonable assertion? We do not need anything more at the higher end. All available labour and all available zoned land should only be used to deliver social and affordable housing at this point given the problem we have.