Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I support the amendment. It is worth bearing in mind that the private market has a role in solving the housing crisis. That relates to the many land banks that individual speculators, developers and landowners own themselves. What the amendment relates to is public land banks and public development. I live in a house beside one of the public private partnerships that succeeded in the noughties. Three PPPs in my area fell apart when the construction industry collapsed. Even in the one that was delivered in Fatima Mansions, which is now called Herberton, there were significant issues with it that left the local authority on the hook on what was local authority land. I know of other areas where public private partnerships were delivered, such as in Finglas where a friend of mine was involved in the rent-to-buy scheme, and the local authority is still paying for the fire defects.

I did not support Senator Warfield's amendment for a similar reason. The LDA could be the driver of this and essentially become the State development agency. As long as we see State land and the private sector as being the only way to deliver public, social and affordable housing, we will be at the whim of developers getting access to credit and investor funding, going bust and not checking their fire safety standards, and we will not deliver for people.

Deleting public private partnerships is an ideological side of the argument, but so too is relying on the market and private developers doing what we should do as a State, and through the LDA, upskilling and building capacity on our own public land. I support the amendments.