Pat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to record that I was at the meeting on Tuesday and raised concerns about what has been put before us today. I raised the concerns about the subdivision of buildings into nine potential units. These are old buildings. The new building regulations do not comply with older buildings and it is premature for the Minister to put this statutory instrument before us today without those guidance documents being in place. I have serious reservations on this.

The fast-track planning process was rushed through the Dáil before Christmas last year and then it took another six months before the Minister took office and signed it into law. Many applications have successfully come through that process.

Action number 3.12 in the plan relates to skills. We have identified another 3,840 skills up to 2021. The industry is stating clearly that there is a skills shortage of 30,000 to 40,000 and an overall shortage of 50,000 to 60,000.

Will the Minister update me on the action relating to finance for developers?

On social housing delivery, I continue to have major reservations, and most people here do, regarding the length of time it is taking to get through the four-stage process. We only have access to the figures for the third quarter, not for the fourth quarter. We still have 76 schemes comprising 1,400 houses waiting for more than a year to get through the capital appraisal process. Of that figure, a total of 33 schemes or 685 units have been waiting for more than two years. The average scheme size is only 15.9 units. The bureaucracy of going through the four-stage process is almost the same for one house as it is for 50 or 100 houses. I do not think that we are getting value here and something must be done to address this and speed up the process. According to the figures for the third quarter, we have only delivered 809 homes between local authorities and approved housing bodies.