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

I thank the Deputy for his reply. I will not mention any individual who does not have the right to come to the House to defend himself or herself.

The Land Development Agency is the developer. It is a public developer. It will guarantee an uplift from all the work it will put into the land in terms of preparing master plans for sites, obtaining planning permission, seeking procurement, buying sites before they are zoned for residential use and taking on board the ten to 15 year time horizon to ensure we are providing homes in the right places for the next 15 to 20 years and will avoid a crisis such as the two we experienced in the past two decades. It will take that uplift and put it back into affordability in these homes. The State will develop housing. In certain cases, it will sell land under licence. It will progress development according to a timeline and ensure that houses are built on public land for the general public. It will provide social houses, subsidised houses and other houses for the public. That is a good thing to do, in particular on very desirable sites such as that in Dundrum. Everyone should have the right to be able to buy a house on such a site and that is what we are trying to achieve with the Land Development Agency. It has not been done before.

On the vacant site levy, I more than doubled that levy when I came into office. It will be at 10% over two years and 7% every year thereafter. If the owner of a vacant site does not develop it, the levy will rise very quickly and be very punitive. Although the increase we have put in place is not yet in effect, we have seen examples of it being a factor in vacant sites being brought into delivery.

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