Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That is a very fair point. Depending on where lands are located, the circumstances in the communities around them and so on, sometimes we need to actively try to get private housing in certain areas in order to create real mixed-tenure and broader communities - O'Devaney Gardens is a good example of that. In other areas, it may be sensible to have a higher percentage of social housing because there may already be a lot of private housing there.

It would be sensible of me to look to the experience within local authorities, which know their areas a lot better than I do, come back which proposals, vet them and have a robust discussion about ensuring that we derive maximum value from the relevant sites. We also need to try to meet the policy objectives of the Rebuilding Ireland plan, which aims to change the way in which we deliver social and affordable housing in terms of mixed-tenure and use, better design and building communities rather than simply building housing estates.

As I said, we are encouraging local authorities to work with our housing delivery unit and to be ambitious in respect of prospective projects. We have a lot of money to spend on housing next year, the year after and so on. We will be part of those projects but they need to make sense from a policy point of view.

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