John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

I recall a reference to capital gains tax on land. The Government has no such proposal. The Deputy mentioned villages and towns. The draft guidelines state that in villages and towns of between 400 and 5,000 people, which are not designated as growth towns in the county development plan, the number of existing dwellings should not be increased by more than 15%. That makes sense. For example, a town of 5,000 would comprise approximately 2,000 dwellings. Applying the new guidelines should restrict new residential development to approximately 300 new dwellings, approximately 750 people over the lifetime of the plan. I believe that makes sense.

We spoke earlier about the legacy of bad planning and all the housing estates which have remained unfinished. I see examples of this as I go around Ireland. There are villages to which, quite inappropriately, a housing estate has been tacked on. Quite often there are no footpaths from the village to the housing estate. The whole idea behind taking in charge and the new guidelines is that this type of practice will cease. We will not get that again. The real losers are the people who live in those communities who do not have the facilities and are inconvenienced in a substantial way.

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