Mr. David O'Connor:

I thank the Deputy very much for her question. It might be a little bit enlightening if I reminded people of my opening statement, which the Deputy unfortunately missed. I was an architect from the mid-seventies. I was part of some big organisations, for example, Dublin City Council, or Dublin Corporation as it was at the time, that were turning out thousands of houses per annum up until the early nineties. We had the engine to do it. That has largely dissipated now. On getting from the concept for a scheme to approval from the council, as there was no Part 8 in those days once the council approved it, it went ahead and would go out to tender.

In my time in Fingal County Council, we had exactly the phenomenon the Deputy has described. We had small builders whom we nurtured and who built small groups of eight or ten houses, the old-fashioned county council cottages, as they were called, up until the late nineties. They were a valuable resource. I have contact with local authorities around the country that deal with the kind of builders the Deputy has spoken about who have extreme problems in trying to raise money. The home-building finance agency was designed to finance those areas and that particular cohort of housing. However, the constraints imposed on this finance mean that some of these small builders have to go elsewhere for finance, which is then added onto the cost of the houses local authorities have to buy. The system is disconnected. We keep going back to this idea of looking at the whole barrel of work in one context. Someone should critically evaluate all of the systems and eliminate some. There must be a change.

We must ensure the initiative goes back to the kinds of organisations Professor Norris has described where there is collaboration between local authorities. Both Patricia King and I were involved with the National Roads Authority at one time or another. When it was established, the National Roads Authority got all the motorways under way. It had very large projects for big motorways but it also put in regional design offices. What Ms King and Professor Norris are talking about is very much the same idea - regional design offices where you get the amalgamated capacity of a couple of local authorities together with architects and planners to bring the whole system through.

On the planning I remember and the planning that is there now, the planning that is there now is completely dominated by legalities. It is called the Planning and Development Act. Everybody knows about the planning. The planning is all about control. It should not be about control. Real planners do not just control; they envisage. They look into the future and see what is possible. They do what is necessary for their own local authorities in their own areas, which they know very well. The initiative has been taken away from them and it must be given back. I believe that is how Eddie Taaffe described it when he was here on behalf of the CCMA. That should be taken seriously. The local authorities should be empowered and allowed to go back to what they do best, which is responding to local needs.

On the points made regarding maintenance, the fact is that local authorities cannot afford to maintain a lot of their own housing. It relies on refurbishment schemes that may come 15 years after the houses were built when they should have been maintained the whole time. That is a gross waste of money because maintaining something you have left for 15 years costs a multiple of what it costs to maintain it every two years, as you would do with your own house.

The system is wrong. The overall commission view is that we should move to affordable rental. This is a different model that Professor Norris has described whereby there is enough capacity, enough turnaround and a circular economy. Ms Edwards has also mentioned this. It is the dominant feature of European housing.