Mr. John Coleman:

I thank the Senator for her questions. On access to land, everything is always more nuanced than it appears at the outset. In respect of the State bodies, it is really only local authorities that hold land for housing. The Housing Agency has some sites but mainly it is the local authorities. We have hit a rich vein with local authorities. We have multiple local authority site partnerships, including a number with Dublin City Council. Indeed, the site we acquired just before Christmas that can deliver 2,300 homes is in the Dublin City Council local authority area.

We are focusing on trying to deliver more homes. We got a number through planning quite recently and we are out to tender on two Dublin City Council sites, one at St. Teresa's Gardens for over 540 homes and another 140 at Cromcastle. We are making progress with Dublin City Council. When the LDA was set up just over five years ago, there were a lot of questions around how the LDA would interact with local authorities. Is it competing with them or is it overstepping the mark with them? We have landed in a comfortable place with local authorities because we are firmly seen as a service provider and an assistance to local authorities to help them deliver on their mandate to provide affordable homes. Hence we are in a comfortable partnership.

As for non-local authorities and those State bodies that do not hold land for housing delivery, it is a more complex question. I would characterise the relationship with most State bodies as them understanding the great housing need of the country. There is a will to try to do things to help assist and to play their part in that. Quite often, there are operational aspects of their own essential businesses as well that they have to consider and deal with. To give a good example, we engage quite a lot, and collaboratively I might add, with CIÉ. We are working with it and it helped us facilitate a major scheme in Cork city on the docklands for 302 apartments to get going. Without its help, we could not have got it moving at all, CIÉ has been highly pragmatic and have been of assistance to us. We are working with them in other areas as well, such as the Limerick Colbert project. To take Dublin city centre, for instance, it was looking at the Conyngham Road site and at Broadstone bus depot. The fact is they are in operational use as bus depots. As the trajectory for buses and bus transport is towards electrification of the fleet, that needs roughly one and half times more space than they have existing. There is always this tension, between essential services like transport, health, hospitals or any other type of service and the critical need we have for housing. I would describe the approach that most State bodies take with us as being pragmatic, notwithstanding the constraints. For instance, it is entirely possible that we could get going at Broadstone on a part of that site. It is the same with Conyngham Road. As for whether we could explore opportunities to move that activity of a bus deport to another location, I think CIÉ and Dublin Bus are willing to do that. It is just more complex than delivering on a site for a local authority that is held for the purposes of housing.