Michael McDowell (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I know there are important bits in this Bill. I am referring to the whole Bill. I said yesterday, in the Minister's absence, that if those changes had been made separately, consolidation could have taken place on a different day but we are being asked to take a huge bundle of things together and some things we have to agree with and some we do not want to agree with. That is what I find difficult. If we want to do something about housing in the greater Dublin area, it is going to require not merely the Land Development Agency sitting around waiting for State lands to become available or to engage in negotiations with landowners to put together schemes. It is going to require an agency that goes out there, draws a line on a map and says this is where we plan to build a new suburb, that it will be beside the Luas, the trains or whatever and we are going to take the initiative and drive that process forward. I notice that out in west Dublin there are a few pilot schemes of that kind, but it needs to be the norm not the exception. This must happen right across the board if we are to drive the process forward.

I have a final point about Senator Fitzpatrick’s contribution. I will use more parliamentary language but I have to say because I was professionally engaged on the part of the Attorney General in relation to the Moore Street site, I saw what happened there. It was the Moore Street site and the upper O’Connell Street development. I agree with Senator Fitzpatrick that one would need a neck of brass to come in here and complain about that street and at the same time ignore one's own strong party political involvement in frustrating everything. I know about that. That, however, only underlines what I am saying. It should not be for British Land or whoever it is now to overcome all the difficulties. Dublin City Council should take out a map and say what is in public ownership and if the present owners of the Carlton site and the adjoining lands want to be part of a consortium to redevelop this area the council will do a deal with them, but it is taking the initiative and bringing all that land into public ownership and drive it politically. I favour a museum on Moore Street and the OPW drew up very elaborate plans for a really good museum at that site. That could be part of the scheme as well. Unfortunately, it had to go the whole way to the Court of Appeal for some logjam to be cleared away but a derelict area of Dublin was being attended to. There were schemes to deal with it. With that site we had the legal system, and politics, and a bit more than politics, namely, people standing around in a threatening fashion and preventing people even from inspecting the land. That is what took place at that site. I agree with Senator Fitzpatrick that if people come in here complaining about something, they need to take a slight look in the mirror about what they and their friends did to leave upper O'Connell Street in a semi-derelict state 100 years after the Rising.