Mr. Brendan Kenny:

It is 120 ha, of which 93 ha is in the housing delivery report Senator Boyhan has in front of him. The balance of it is in areas such as Ballymun, Cherry Orchard and Darndale. Despite the crisis, it would not be appropriate or sustainable for us to build high rise or high density social housing in those areas so we have to look at other options. Therefore, we are fairly constrained, but it means in 2021 we will have very little to no land left.

The other challenge is around the process. Our relationship with the Department is very good. We are in contact with officials there on a regular basis, perhaps too often, but we have a very good relationship with them. We do not want to get into any kind of blame game. The Department turns around approvals very quickly. I have seen some in recent times being turned around in as little as 24 hours. There are no logjams there at all.

In some cases the prices are coming in very high. I can talk about that later. Serious questions are being asked about why the price is so high. If we engage or make a phone call the situation can be turned around again with 24 hours or a couple of days. We do not have any difficulty there.

It would be helpful if the four-stage process could be reduced to two or three but there are three or four stages in any process. We have to do capital appraisal anyhow. We have to do a cost estimate in any case so it does not take too much time to get it to the Department and to turn it around. The overall process is horrendous in terms of the time it takes to get a contractor on site. Once we get a contractor on site things move very quickly. For ordinary housing in recent years it takes three years from the time we start doing the feasibility study to the time we get houses built. When we built the rapid-build houses last year we cut it down to 50% of that time, which shows it can be done. It is not just a problem with public procurement.