Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----less than half of what was offered was taken up. NAMA was certainly very critical of that when it appeared before the housing committee.

In respect of Senator Coffey's point, I am very conscious that many of the foundations on which we are trying build were put in place by Senator Coffey when he was Minister of State and by the former Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly. It is hoped we will now benefit from some of that work.

In respect of the devolved scheme for local authorities, to put it simply, councils do not have to get sign-off from us at every stage for any scheme that involves spending less than €2 million. They can just get on and do it. We are reviewing that at the moment because the take-up has been very low. I would like to devolve more power to local authorities to be able to make decisions, but with that devolved power comes increased responsibility in terms of the financial management of the projects. We will not have a situation where halfway through a project that should cost €4 million, it looks like the project will cost €6 million and local authorities come back to me asking for an extra €2 million. We cannot have that so we must have guarantees, assurances and checking mechanisms around making sure we get full value for money and that we have quality design and so on. The principle of giving more responsibility to local authorities around financing and delivering these projects would certainly make life a lot easier for us with regard to getting approvals faster. If we can do it, we will.

On the issue of removing barriers to output and capacity loss within local authorities, the Secretary General told me that the number is around 400 extra staff across local authorities linked to housing and planning in the last 12 to 18 months. We are trying to get more capacity in there. There is probably still some room for more, particularly in areas of real pressure like Dublin and Cork. We are reviewing the mortgage to rent scheme to try to get better outcomes with that. I think most of the questions have been covered. If I have not answered them, please raise them again.