Mr. John McCarthy:

I thank the Deputies and Senators. I will try to deal with the questions in sequence and will start those posed by Deputy Casey, who is under time pressure. I do not know the details of the particular project to which he referred. If a project gets to a point of approval and the planning permission runs out for it a couple of months afterwards, there is no win for anybody. I will certainly look at that. If Wicklow County Council were to come to us with an alternative, be it to go out and get a turnkey development or something else that could substitute, if the planning cannot be renewed for some reason, we would certainly look very positively on that.

In terms of homelessness and move-on solutions, there is no intention that people would move into worse accommodation. A range of solutions will need to be put in place to ensure that we achieve our objectives there, namely, quality and better housing outcomes for people, be they of a short, medium or long-term nature. We will certainly be working to ensure that improved, quality housing solutions are actually put in place.

In terms of the Airbnb issue and the short-term letting of property, we have committed to looking at that in the context of the rental strategy. A group on which Ms Nic Aonghusa participates is looking at it and is due to report in quarter 2. It is very much on our radar. Previously, we had a discussion about the number of units that are used. Different figures are spoken about, which is something we need to work out. A lot of the units are bed and breakfast properties, as it were. They are very often people who are letting out a property for a week or two while they are away themselves. They are not actually units that would be available as alternative rental units. Equally, we do need to bottom out on the ones that should be used for long-term accommodation and that are going into the short-term space.

On the voids and rapid-build, one general comment is that we have tried to be as flexible as we possibly can with local authorities. We do not start out at the beginning of the year by saying "This is the way the year has to pan out and if it does not pan out that way, good luck to you." Going back to what I was saying to Deputy Coppinger earlier, one of the main reasons we managed to ensure that we spent our full budget last year was that we took a very flexible approach with local authorities. Accordingly, if some projects are delayed for whatever reason, we engage with the local authority involved so that it has the capacity to put alternative solutions in place, be that through a purchase programme or by moving funds into programmes such as that relating to voids. We have made significant progress on the voids in the past three years. Offhand, I think we have supported getting over 7,000 void units back into use in recent years, in addition to the ones the local authorities themselves have supported. We are probably getting to a point at which, while there is more work to be done in some places, other local authority areas have really broken the back of the issue. We do have provision for a voids programme this year. Certainly, if any local authority were to come to us to say they had a bigger voids programme than what we might initially fund, we would look to see if there was a way to move money around.

On PPPs, the Deputy is going to make a submission to us and we will certainly look at it. As part of the process of developing the housing PPP programme, consideration was given to experience of PPPs both here, not for housing but for other types of development, and abroad, including the UK. I think there were even visits to the UK to try to learn from the experience over there. We will not be looking to repeat any mistakes that were identified elsewhere. The Deputy stated that he would prefer it if direct public funding was being used. All I can say on that point is that, for better or worse, there are public funding parameters within which we have to work. The PPP programme is an attempt, from a policy point of view, to try to see if there is additionality that we can get outside of those parameters. We do not want to be making mistakes. We do not want to be solving today's problems while creating problems for five, ten or 20 years down the road.

Deputy Ellis was referring to the Scribblestown site, for which 71 units are envisaged. There would have been considerable work done with the local authorities in examining the individual sites. I hear what the Deputy is saying about having 70 social housing units on one site. It had to be looked at in the wider context. I am conscious that Deputy Coppinger might be of the view that we should have gone up into triple digits. All I am saying is that there are different approaches for different locations.