Michael Kitt (Fianna Fail)

When Senator O'Meara mentioned the issue of social segregation, it reminded me of the court case about which we heard yesterday in which the judge commented that just because people living beside each other might both be living in expensive houses, it does not necessarily mean they will get on. There is always a difficulty in dealing with segregation.

Senator O'Meara wanted to remove the word "undue". I know that in County Galway when it comes to the issue of allocating affordable houses, there is always a difficulty in deciding who should get the end house, the middle house and so on. I understand a lottery system is used in most local authorities to decide which houses people can buy under the affordable housing scheme. There will always be a difficulty, but as we know from the court case mentioned, one can also have problems between people living in expensive houses, over driveways or whatever.

When the Minister talked about the issue of making payments to the local authority, he pointed out that it was for the provision of social and affordable housing. I welcome this. He also pointed out that one could have a combination of the payment of money for social and affordable housing and the reservation of land at another location. Payment of money is not the only option, an issue about which people might be concerned. I know from my experience that there are many situations where private individuals could help if money was available to obtain land for community purposes, perhaps from the Land Commission. There are still some tracts of land available. Money could be used for that purpose. It would be useful to look at the question of the payment of money or provision of land at another location which I would not completely rule out. As the Minister said, the Bill gives us flexibility to provide housing as quickly as possible. I support the Bill.