Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)

I thank the Minister for his reply. A number of Ministers over a number of Governments, including from my party, have tried to do this or have done this with apartment standards. It did not work in 2015, 2016 or 2018 and it is definitely not going to work now. We need to see the LDA's evidence for how this will cut the cost of developing an apartment. Some of these apartments are going to be as small as 32 sq. m and no putative buyer on the private market is going to buy an apartment that small. There just is not a market for it. We are talking about a portion of a tennis court or the size of a very large car. These apartments are going to be build-to-rent, they are going to be built in Dublin and Cork only and they are not going to be affordable or they are going to be used for social housing. We are going to have monolithic, one box, very small, single aspect, quite depressing and dark yellow pack apartments that either social housing tenants or transient renters will be forced to live in.

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