Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I was made aware by both the city council and NAMA of the history, as the Deputy outlined, of the development of the affordable element of housing on that site. To my mind, it was not the correct decision. I would have made a different one but the decision is made. The critical issue now is that we deliver the affordable housing and the social housing which will be delivered under Part V. I absolutely agree with the Deputy that in this area of the city in particular local communities face the real risk of being excluded from being able to have their children or relatives live in the community they grew up in because it happens to be an area of such rapid development. With the very welcome arrival of large companies in the docklands and their workers being in the same market and area, there is a real risk local communities will be frozen out. We must do everything to avoid that possibility. This includes using the serviced sites fund, which is provided for situations just like this. It will be able to help to reduce costs, although perhaps not as much as we would have liked or as much as might have been possible had a different land deal arrangement been done. However, that should not stop us doing it.

We should not stop there. There are other lands and approaches we can take involving the Land Development Agency, the State and a variety of State bodies. Dublin Port is adjacent to this land and has a very large land bank. I will be talking to the Dublin Port Company to see what it could possibly do to help us in this regard. This applies to other sites as well. Across my constituency, this problem of house price and rental cost inflation is most acute. Consequently, we must do our utmost to reverse this or provide alternatives, and we will do that.

What we cannot and do not want to do is delay is the delivery of the houses on the Irish Glass Bottle site. It has full planning permission and will be able to get serviced sites funding. We will be able to get that social housing as part of the Part V procedure. We have been waiting too long for this to be built. It is now ready to go, subject, as the Deputy said, to agreement between the developer and the council. The State will do whatever we can to help deliver the housing but we must deliver it quickly because we have a housing crisis in that part of the city that we must address. We can and will address it.

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