Dessie Ellis (Dublin North West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Correct me if I am wrong, but having listened to the witnesses they seem to be saying that there is not enough money to reach the targets or that they could deliver so much if they had the funding. That tells me there is a major issue in terms of money. The Minister is saying he is providing the money but we need to be more ambitious in terms of saying we can deliver something if the funding is provided. We need to be straight about that.

The procurement issue seems to have always been a bit of a problem in terms of how quickly we can deliver. How can that process be speeded up? How can these obstacles be dealt with to ensure quicker delivery? I talked about co-operative housing and mentioned Ó Cualann and the model it is using. Is there scope for more of that? Ó Cualann has said it could deliver more, but are there other places we can look to in order to deliver similar initiatives? As I said, we could set up a list of companies that could sign up, which would help to deal with procurement. One could choose from the list to build social and affordable housing schemes. Can the local authority deliver this? Must we go to Ó Cualann? Is there a mechanism to deliver this and more? This is also key to setting prices. I believe the private sector is just holding on to a lot of land in many cases to up the prices before they start building. If we build more affordable housing, it will level out prices and rents in the long term. I am curious whether the witnesses could tell me what is the big hold-up. Where are the real obstacles?