Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent)
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80. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the role his Department will play with regard to the new Government agency that will buy private land adjoining existing prime sites held by State and semi-State organisations in order to assemble land holdings that will then be developed for housing; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [19861/18]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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Project Ireland 2040signals a significant policy shift towards securing more compact and sustainable urban and rural development, which requires significantly more effective land management in key development areas. Against that background, it is proposed to establish a National Regeneration and Development Agency to assist in ensuring a more effective approach to strategic land management, particularly in terms of publicly owned land.

To maximise its effectiveness, the Agency will focus on activating the development potential of strategic pieces of underutilised public lands in key urban areas to stimulate regeneration and wider investment. This will involve working primarily with the relevant local authorities and wider public bodies and the private sector, with the scope to assemble and rationalise land holdings, whether they are publicly or privately owned, in order to enable the re-purposing of lands that may not be currently used optimally, with regard to wider and long-term public policy and planning objectives.

Detailed arrangements in relation to the functions, powers and mechanisms for the establishment of the Agency are currently being developed by my Department, in conjunction with the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, with a view to their finalisation and implementation at the earliest available opportunity.