Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It has been brought to my attention there is an amendment in the group which I have not spoken to. Amendment No. 17 is eminently sensible and I hope it would happen anyway. It proposes that in performing functions under the Act, housing authorities would have regard to the appropriateness of the location of dwellings in terms of facilitating access to public transport, education services, health services and public amenities. Something we have really seen during the pandemic is that we have areas and communities where there are not the same types of amenities and access to public transport and people can become very isolated.If a local authority is entering into an arrangement on affordable housing, I am simply asking that it be required to have regard to those factors. That is very much in the spirit of what many local authorities are looking at anyway in terms of the idea of the ten-minute town or the 15-minute city. It is also in the spirit of our obligations under UN sustainable development goals. Specifically, I am thinking of sustainable development goal 11 relating to sustainable cities and communities. I sit on the Joint Committee on Climate Action and we also bring these points through about sustainable cities and communities. That is why I put public transport as one of the elements that should be part of any new public initiative on affordable housing.

The word "sustainability" is in both amendments tabled by myself and Senator Warfield. Whatever might emerge in this section in terms of the language, that word "sustainability" will have to be part of it.