I want to take the opportunity to discuss my experience from a housing perspective. As someone who has been a councillor in County Kildare for a number of years and, indeed, a town councillor before that, I have seen the different tranches. I have seen a housing boom and a housing bust, and now I have seen continuing price increases in housing. We have seen that a lot of those houses have become out of reach for ordinary people. A lot of our friends and families have not been able to buy in the area and have had to move outside of the area, unfortunately. That is the reality, however. I would see this housing plan as a significant step in trying to allay that and to ensure that we do get development in our areas and in our towns and villages. Previous speakers have spoken to their own experiences because, ultimately, in an area like housing, we are especially aware of how our own area is. When I talk about the story of north Kildare, I speak to where we have a lot of housing. We have a lot of housing in the likes of Naas, Leixlip, Celbridge and Kilcock. We all know those areas have had a relative boom in housing numbers but, ultimately, what those places are lacking is infrastructure, and they have lacked in infrastructure. I also think about urban regional and development, URDF, funding over the last number of years. Typically, it has gone before to areas such as large towns where there might be a courthouse or an old building that needs doing up. Millions of euro are poured into these older towns. That is the one thing north Kildare does not have. It does not have huge old buildings and wide streets, but what it does have is a lot of small, old villages that ultimately now have rings of houses around them. However, they do not have the infrastructure, and they do not have the facilities. I spoke in this Chamber before about how between the towns of Leixlip, Celbridge and Maynooth, there is currently a population of 53,000, and that will expand significantly. We have a university, but we do not have a proper community centre. We do not have a cinema or a theatre. We do not have basic fundamental items that would be in a city that would encompass that number of people. Also, Kilcock is only a few minutes away, as is Clane. They are the types of issues we need to support, and I will be asking when the URDF funding comes out that north Kildare is looked on very favourably in order that we can deliver the facilities that need to go in behind the housing that ultimately will go into our area.

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