Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Thursday, 10 October 2024
Public Accounts Committee
Financial Statements 2023: Land Development Agency
9:30 am
Mr. John Coleman:
There are two ways I can answer that. The first relates to the existing momentum and trajectory we have built up, with 37 direct-delivery schemes and a further 22 schemes operating through house-builder partnerships. We are working on a total of 59 schemes. We have billions of euro in capital and nearly 200 staff. To my mind, it would not make sense to do anything that would upset that. Let us keep going with that trajectory and delivery. There will be thousands of homes coming on stream per annum as a result, all of them affordable.
On land aggregation and land assembly, we do engage in that activity. It is mandated. It is more under the radar because it takes a long time, because of infrastructural and other constraints on the land, to yield results. We have been engaging in the activity in question somewhat under the radar. Probably the best examples are the schemes at Sandy Road, Galway, which can yield around 750 homes, and at Colbert Station, Limerick, which can yield around 2,500 homes. These are thousand-piece jigsaws, with so many parts to them that they are very difficult to pull together, but we have produced master plans in both cases. We anticipate lodging planning applications for them next year. This is a major milestone because-----