Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We are putting all these extra billions into the LDA and it is just to deliver the existing plan. Is that what the Minister of State is telling us? It is for the existing plan. This is not linked to what everybody knows has to happen and which the Government itself knows has to happen, which is a dramatic upscaling of the targets necessary, which inevitably means a dramatic upscaling of the social and affordable housing targets. It is worth mentioning, however, that I think - the Minister of State can correct me if I am wrong - and much to my annoyance, the legislation around the LDA can potentially allow it to build private housing as well, although we have had some commitments, after much argument, that it will all be social and affordable, but I wonder. Particularly when there are references to things such as future financing commitments or requirements, you being to wonder where this leads if we do not have a clear mandate for the LDA to be about building social and affordable housing on public land and creating, as Deputy O’Callaghan said, a public landbank on which we can build it and, thereby, build at a reasonable price.

Surely this extra money should be linked to plans to increase LDA delivery. Can the Minister of State say anything about that? I understand he is reading from his notes and maybe these are questions for the Minister, Deputy O'Brien. I do not know who knows the answers to this. If all this extra money is going into the LDA, you would have thought that in the current climate, after the Housing Commission report, the ESRI and everybody - Uncle Tom Cobley and all - acknowledging we have to dramatically increase output, the LDA would surely not just be sticking to the plan, or is it? Is this it? It is woefully inadequate. Will the Minister of State elaborate on whether this is it for the LDA between now and 2028?

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