Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats)
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In terms of this awful term, "learning lessons", which often we do not do, obviously, the local authority acquired these. According to the C and AG's opening statement, the agency attributes the fact almost half of the site area acquired under the scheme still had no development plans or proposals for delivery of social or affordable housing to issues such as infrastructural constraints, lack of demand for social housing, individual site issues such as flooding risk, topographical unsuitability and zoning constraints. If any organisation should have detail on these issues, it would be the local authorities. That is their bread and butter. Am I correct in saying that they then would have applied for finance for these? Therefore, there was a second overview in terms of looking at what they were looking to buy. There were obviously failures in terms of buying land in locations where there was not a need for social housing to the extent of the land that was bought and all of those other constraints, but they were given the money to do it as well. If we are to learn lessons and there has not been a review of this, are we sure that the systems are in place to make sure that this does not happen again?