Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

-----to demand movement on this area. I seek clarification and reassurance that this is not happening now.

In today's newspapers there is an account of a Fáilte Ireland spokesperson saying that we need a 1,000-bed hotel in Dublin for conferences and that we are missing out because the city does not have a mega hotel of that kind. I am sure that is correct but I wish to make a wider point. Will the Leader consider asking the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, to the House? Our Dublin skyline is festooned with cranes, which appear to be building offices, hotels and student accommodation. I am sure that the student accommodation proliferation is good for those students who can afford it and it is good for Ireland as an international education hub, but it is tax driven. It is strange that we have all of those cranes, with each crane probably representing a couple of hundred building workers working on those projects, and yet we are not making significant progress on housing for people in the city centre. If tax-driven schemes give rise to student accommodation, I believe we now need a very different approach to urban living and the provision of accommodation in urban areas, taking into account proposals such as the Vienna model for public housing.

In the course of a debate last night on sentencing policy guidelines - I very much welcome that this will come to a conclusion very soon - the Thornton Hall site was mentioned. In that context, I pointed out that as part of that project the Department of Justice and Equality had sold some land at Shanganagh Castle to Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. The land was for social and affordable housing but the lands have lain empty for 14 years. Now there is a row between that council and the Land Development Agency. Somebody needs to get people to talk or to crack heads together. If that is the record - 14 years lying vacant - and now there is a row about who should develop them, then we have a real problem on our hands.

In today's newspapers there is an account of a Fáilte Ireland spokesperson saying that we need a 1,000 bed hotel in Dublin for conferences, and that we are missing out because the city does not have a mega hotel of that kind. I am sure this is correct, but I want to make a wider point. I ask the Leader to consider asking the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Murphy, into the House. The Dublin skyline is currently festooned with cranes. The appear to be building offices, hotels and student accommodation. The student accommodation proliferation is good, I am sure, for those students who can afford it. It is also good for Ireland as an international education hub. It is, however, tax driven. It is strange that all of those cranes are working on all of those projects and every crane probably represents a couple of hundred workers working on those projects, yet we are not making significant progress on housing for people in the city centre. If tax-driven schemes give rise to student accommodation I believe that we really need a very different approach to urban living and the provision of accommodation in urban areas, taking into account proposals such as the Vienna model for public housing. We mentioned this in the course of a debate last night on the sentencing policy guidelines - - and which , I very much welcome that this will come to a conclusion very soon.