Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)

The last point is a good one and should be included in the debate. I am anxious that apartment blocks should be more family appropriate. I welcome support from Deputy O'Dowd and his party for greater densities because that is the way to go. He is right to say it is the way to go. If we do not go up we will go out. That has been a problem. We must have some sort of regulation when local authorities make extraordinary attempts to rezone massive areas of land and encourage speculative development of, for example, small villages to a state that could not be supported. There must be more regulation in this area. Deputy O'Dowd is right to say that Dublin's footprint is extraordinarily large. There are relatively low densities and the way to go forward is to look for better density and better quality.

A comparison of housing completions in 2006 and 2005 indicates a welcome change. In Dublin city, for example, the building was up 10%, largely because brownfield development sites were brought on stream. There has been an extraordinary renaissance in that type of development. Building in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown is up34%. There may be different reasons for that.

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