Mr. John McCarthy:

In respect of Deputy Ó Broin's point, I do not want to be difficult about this but the fact I gave the same answer as I did on the previous occasion is not an indication of any sort of lackadaisical approach or lack of engagement with this issue. It is a reflection of the fact that when I was here the previous time, I was trying to signal that we were engaged with the issue and we continue to be engaged with the issue. It is not impossible and we are certainly working on a number of fronts to make sure we take whatever opportunities we have to refine our data and satisfy ourselves that we have the best possible range of data available to us. For example, we are engaging with the ESB in respect of its connection system because, as the Deputy said, there is a sense that this reconnections piece is probably a very small element but nonetheless, if we can identify it exactly, it will help us.

Developments on the building control management system could also help us, and we are working to see if we can accelerate that. Again, I do not want the Deputy to say that I am saying the same thing again, but it is important to emphasise that we do use other data sets such as commencements. Possibly some of the completions have been in respect of developments that may have been started some time ago and one would have expected them to be built out as the housing sector recovers. We are getting to a point where the commencement figures are rising and are not too far away from exceeding the completions figures, so that is further evidence of a pickup in activity. We have engaged with a range of people, including some of the people referred to by the Deputy. We continue to be committed to engaging with anybody who is interested in this space. We are also working with the CSO, which has a lot of expertise around quality assuring statistics and has protocols around that. We want to learn from it to ensure we have that quality assurance piece that we can apply to our statistics. There was some commentary in the media during the past week or ten days that referred to some of the debate around activity figures, but the conclusion it came to was that regardless of that debate, there is one undeniable reality, which is that activity is picking up significantly.

In response to Deputy Coppinger's points and the social housing figures for last year, units we classify as regeneration units are new units in regeneration areas, so they are actually new stock. They are different from the voids programme which is still bringing stock back into use and is critically important in terms of meeting need. Generally, these regeneration units are new units being built in areas like the Limerick regeneration area where sites would have been cleared and demolitions would have taken place going back some time. If we look back at social housing new build two or three years ago, which has been spoken about in this committee on many occasions, we can see that activity had reached an incredibly low level. Everybody is aware of that. If we look at the period since Rebuilding Ireland was published, and we published data on this with the quarterly progress report and will update that data on a quarterly basis, we can see that we are now at a point where more than 500 projects are in the social housing construction pipeline. They range from small projects to larger projects.