Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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I have a couple of follow-up questions. I appreciate the time the witnesses are giving today. Do the witnesses have a figure on how much local authority-owned land there is that is currently zoned for residential development? If they do not, maybe they can provide it. Do they know if they can provide that information? That is separate from what they said about potential sites. There is going to be all of this rezoning of land for development under the new planning framework. What can we do to avoid that land essentially spiking in value as a result of the rezoning and that adding to house prices down the line? Do the witnesses think the land value tax will have an impact? It might come back to a CPO question. Is a pre-emptive way of carrying out a CPO on land prior to the rezoning that would keep that value of the land and to ensure it is affordable land going to affordable housing delivery? That essentially would be implementing the Kenny report. How will we avoid this huge rezoning adding to house prices because land is going to go up in value and that is going to feed into higher house prices?

I have questions around the issue of affordable housing need. While Mr. Taaffe made the point earlier relating to Wexford and the cost of housing that can be bought, I looked up the figures while we were discussing this. There are at least 15,000 adults still living with their parents in Wexford. In my understanding, they are not captured in the housing needs and demand assessment. Can the witnesses provide a comment on that? Is there a gap there in terms of that housing needs and demand assessment that we are not capturing affordable housing need properly? Should we be moving to something I have talked about, namely, an affordable housing assessment of need along with a social housing assessment of need that would create what we could call a waiting list? We have a social housing assessments of need and then we would have an affordable housing assessment of need, so we can plan what is the affordable housing level of need because we currently do not have any figures on that.