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

We have €300 million of capital value earmarked into the plan between now and 2021. In total, that programme is expected to deliver 1,500 social housing units through PPPs. There is a tendering process that will mean that in most of these projects, the money will be spent next year rather than this year because it takes time to ramp that up. We should use public private partnerships. They were much more expensive ten years ago than they are now and we should use PPPs for infrastructure generally. We can put together much more competitive funding packages for that now. Ultimately, for me, this is about trying to build houses as quickly as we can and using the capacity and the efficiencies of the private sector to be able to build social housing for us. If a PPP model is the best model to do that, then I am up for that. We take every site and every project on a case-by-case basis.