Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Do local authorities need the approval of the Minister or the Minister of State in order to build council houses? From what I can see, local authorities have no freedom to make decisions about providing housing or taking money from elsewhere in the capital budget, allocating it to housing and deciding to build houses. Should we not give as much freedom and flexibility as possible to local authorities to make decisions about the housing they need and how they would use the funding available?