Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It has been an interesting debate and I note that issue about flexibility. I want to address some of the issues in what Senator Casey said. The Senator touched on the lack of available land within his own local authority, in this case Wicklow County Council, and the challenges there are. I note the Senator said that we have to reach out. We have to reach out to everybody. The Senator makes that very valid point.

The Senator's preferred choice would be 100% public housing on public land. I believe that. That is the optimum, that we have public housing on public land, a public resource and we define what public housing is.

If I had my way, there would be no such thing as selling public housing. It would be a resource. It would be an asset of the State and anyone could access public housing and it would be linked to his or her ability to pay - differential rent, as we would know it, in our local authorities. That is the ultimate choice. People on the Continent have it. People in Vienna have it. One can be an architect living in a particular zone in Vienna and pay according to one's means. We are not there yet. No doubt it is a place we would all like to be. That is the point.

I suppose the point I want to take up with Senator Casey is the giving of power back to the planning authority. There are reserve functions and executive functions. We will not get into local government and analysing all of that now. The real power has to be with those who are elected by the people. They are the elected city and county councillors who make these decisions. We need to shift the balance of power there because in many authorities it is not what the elected members want. There will always be tension - that is not a bad thing in local government - but there has to be an acknowledgement that they are elected by the people to represent the people. It is in their interest and everyone's interest to build proper sustainable communities and have happy people with homes. Everyone will benefit from that.

I still think there is a need for public private partnerships. We cannot rule out the need. It is not the top priority but it has to be there somewhere. We need to do much more work on it. We should have that conditionality. Clearly, we know what we are getting into when we are getting into public private partnerships in the beginning. It should not unravel and end up being something later that was not what we set out to do. I will not talk about other infrastructural projects that are going on and the problems associated with those. We have lessons to learn from the bad experience of public private partnership.

Senator Casey made the real point. Other local authorities are similar where they do not have sufficient land bank. One could argue that happened because of bad decisions taken many years ago. In other local authorities, such as the one I live in, they say we have too much land zoned for housing and yet nobody seems to able to afford a home.There is variance right across the sector. I am in favour of retaining the mechanism of engaging with public private partnership. It is not the top choice but it is one that we cannot rule out.