Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

It is co-living, okay. The Minister gave them notice that there was a month to call this off, and within that month, there were eight new applications for co-living. I reference it because it is a significant problem in my constituency. The residents in the area of the Player Wills development, which takes in Player Wills and other sites around it, are themselves having to pay for a judicial review of the strategic housing development because more than half of the 490 units will be for co-living and high-rise will be going up 19 storeys on one site and 16 storeys on the other sites. They have had no input whatsoever into this plan. Their voices are not being heard. The type of accommodation that is being developed there, clearly, in a post-pandemic world, has to be totally unsuitable. It is unsuitable for sustainable communities. It is unsuitable for family accommodation. Rather this will be about transient communities moving in and out of a settled area and the sort of accommodation that is not what is needed for the cohort of families who are desperately living on the waiting lists. Instead, we need sustainable communities where families can be accommodated. The cancelling of co-living is merely another example of how previous Ministers made a bags of what they thought would get us out of the crisis. It did not work and now we are going to cancel it.

This latest Land Development Agency will be the moneymaker. It will be the one we need that is essential to getting us out of the crisis and yet it is not what we need. It is not what the thousands of people who are ensnared in this crisis will need and it will not deliver just and decent housing for all. This Bill is not what we need and I argue against it. I look forward to the debates we will have on Committee Stage to answer the sort of problems we see. The Land Development Agency is a giveaway to developers and builders and will not address the crisis we face daily.

See this speech in context