Ms Claire McManus:

I thank the Deputy for her question. The Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage is working on proposed new compact settlement guidelines, which have the potential to help. We have a housing crisis on the one hand and a climate crisis on the other. If the housing crisis was 20 years ago, the solution would be to zone hectares and hectares more land, and we would have supply now, because building suburban sprawl is viable. It is very cheap. Delivering a garden is very cheap and it has a value. Instead, small, awkward sites inside a town or city need to be delivered as housing. They are much more expensive. Also, we are talking about delivering housing next to existing communities and neighbourhoods, so that has to be done in a win-win, positive manner. That takes a lot of investment and, in many cases, subvention. If the value of the homes is less than the costs to deliver, they just do not happen. We would like to see a situation where, if there is a planning application beside an existing neighbourhood, the people living there are pleased because that means there will be a high-quality public park, good urban realm, it will be pedestrian friendly and all that type of thing. That takes investment. It is important that urban realm gets the right level of standard and investment in the new standards that are being developed. Part of those standards are to reduce garden sizes, reduce the quantum of parking spacing and reduce back-to-back distances, which is about fitting more dwellings on the same space. We also need walk-up standards. Across most of Europe, the answer to the affordable housing question is to allow walk-up apartment schemes three and four storeys in height, which we cannot have here. That has to be part of the solution. My solutions are not focused on the MMC, but we need to acknowledge that providing solutions to the climate crisis has made solving the housing crisis more expensive. That needs to be addressed head on.