Mr. John McCarthy:

We manage the social housing approval process within the terms of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform's requirements. We did considerable work in the early part of 2016 and we reduced the process to four stages. We also introduced a one stage approval process for social housing projects up to €2 million in value or 15 units in order to try to ensure we are absolutely delivering as efficiently as we can. We have reviewed it again in the past couple of months and identified a number of further measures that we will look to take, particularly over the second quarter of this year. One of these measures considers whether we can de-risk further the one stage process for local authorities so they can avail of it in the coming months and get on with it. With regard to the projects that still need to come through the four stage process, we are looking at how we can between ourselves and the local government system agree target timeframes for each of us in playing our part in moving on the process.

Just to conclude on that, I will go back to the pipeline maybe. If the Deputy looks at how the social housing project pipeline has evolved over the course of 2016, I think he will see in terms of the 500 projects that are now in it, with 8,500 units, there has been very significant progress in terms of progressing projects through the system.