Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputies. The public private partnership model is not always the best model to use on a particular site. Deputy Ó Broin's colleague is chair of the housing committee on Dublin City Council. I have met with him and I can meet with him again to discuss some potential ideas for this site if it is not proceeding under the public private partnership model.

I have had extensive meetings with the European Investment Bank, and those meetings continue, in regard to different sources of funding for cost rental on a major scale, as the Deputy is aware, given I have said this previously in the Dáil. Deputy Ó Broin is right that the decision regarding the mix or the number of units will not necessarily come to the Oireachtas but, nonetheless, 300 units is very low for that site. Under previous planning guidelines for apartments, it could have been as many as 420 and, under the new guidelines, one could achieve even more than that. It is very important, when we look at Project Ireland 2040, that, in the context of these key sites in the city, we are achieving compact growth and real density, particularly in light of public infrastructure for transport, schools and everything else.

Deputy Joan Collins is right about rents being too high. The most recent information from the RTB indicates that rates of increase came down in 2017 in comparison with 2016 but that they are still very high, at just over 5%. However, as we begin to do more in the rental sector and to make more interventions regarding cost rental and land, which is something we are going to do, this will have an important impact on the different factors that are causing this affordability challenge for people up and down the country, particularly in the major cities such as Dublin.

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