Ms Bairbre Nic Aongusa:

I imagine that some of the commentary about the delays in the process is a reflection of where we were about 18 months ago. As I have described, we have spent the last 18 months strengthening our capacity, recruiting additional resources and streamlining processes so as to enable the whole process to go much more smoothly and much quicker. The Minister has already said that he is determined to improve it further and we are already doing that. I have seen a significant improvement in the throughput times relating to the various stages in the past six months. That is partly because we held nine seminars and workshops around the country in the first three months of this year at which our professionals, quantity surveyors and architects met local authority and approved housing body staff and explained to them the procedures and what was required for each approval stage. For example, if a local authority has new staff who have not worked in housing before and they send something in for a stage 2 without the correct documentation, that causes a delay. We have taken the approach that communication is at the heart of this, along with collaborative work with the local authorities. We have been focusing on that. Between January and March, we had nine workshops and seminars. Since March, our teams have met with virtually every local authority and we have meetings arranged for June and July as well. I would be fairly confident that there will be a significant reduction in the time it takes for projects to go through the various stages.