Brian Leddin (Limerick City, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I want to thank the Minister of State, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, for his efforts in the Department. His leadership in working together with the Ministers of State, Deputy Malcolm Noonan, who is present, and Deputy Peter Burke, is a good example of the cross-party co-operation, respect and hard work that is at the heart of this Government. The Department has an ambitious work programme for the next few years in the areas of marine planning and development for offshore wind, electoral reform, protecting our natural and built heritage and reforming local government. I wish the Minister and the Ministers of State well in that regard.

One of the most important tasks facing the Department is the provision of new housing. Scaling up our housing ambition is incredibly urgent and there are no simple solutions but looking at how we manage and develop public land is a very good start.

I believe my own city of Limerick shows both what a huge opportunity this Bill offers but also perhaps a cautionary tale from the past. In terms of the opportunity, unfortunately, Limerick has been the victim of bad planning over the past few decades. The city has expanded further and further out into its hinterland while the city centre has been hollowed out. I wish I could say that we have learned from our mistakes but unfortunately the local authority is planning further expansion at the periphery of the city.

Planning issues in Limerick are primarily an issue for those of us in Limerick but my point is that the bad planning practices have left a great deal of vacant land in the city centre, much of it publicly owned. The LDA will have a mandate to identify publicly owned land and there is much of it in Limerick, which is either fully vacant or inappropriately used, for example as surface car parks. The LDA has already identified the lands around Colbert Station for high-density, high-quality, transport-oriented development and I look forward to it bringing its expertise to the rest of the city.

The cautionary tale involves an agency that in some ways was the predecessor of the LDA, namely, the National Building Agency. For some years the National Building Agency was the de facto housing department of Limerick Corporation, performing virtually all of the building of publicly owned houses in the city.

Limerick was suffering from a housing crisis at the time, with people living in slums and tenements in the city. In our haste, unfortunately, we built hundreds of houses on the outskirts of the city, many of which had to be knocked down a few decades later. The reason was that we sought to build houses but did not realise we needed to build communities too. One critical aspect of a thriving community is that it has a social mix. We learned in Limerick that building only public housing on public land was a mistake. While I respect my Dublin colleagues who are deeply concerned about affordability in Dublin, and while the Minister has the power to revise the proportion of public housing upwards, which is probably appropriate for Dublin, the provision of a minimum of 50% affordable housing is an appropriate proportion for Limerick, where we want to create mixed communities close to the city centre to revitalise our city.

I welcome the Bill and the openness of the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, to improving it. This is necessary legislation for the improvement of our villages, towns and cities throughout the country.

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