Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am reading the definition of "house" on page 30 to try to cast my mind back. I will go back to my principal point and then follow up on Deputy O'Callaghan's amendment No. 897. I apologise for forcing the Minister of State to repeat himself a bit but I want to emphasise the point around the HNDA because this is a really significant thing. Section 219(4)(a) states that a housing strategy must have "regard to the overall housing needs of the population of its functional area". The problem is that most local authorities do not know what the overall housing needs of the population in a functional area are. They might have a sense of the macro-target that is imposed by the Department centrally - we have had long debates as to why the current targets are too low, a point which, thankfully, even the Taoiseach now accepts - but also when those targets are revised, there will be a time lag of at least two years on the up-to-date data and we still do not know-----