Ms Margaret Geraghty:

The closing date for the applications was the end of August and we submitted the applications by then. We were advised the first tranche of funding would be announced before the end of the year. We are very optimistic about the Fingal schemes as we have advanced those schemes through many of the preliminary stages. We hope to benefit from that funding.

Equally the local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, funding for Donabate was instrumental in our being able to start the work on bringing that landbank forward for development. Some of the site constraints can also relate to contamination and other issues. We are optimistic, however, from our conversations with the Department, that we have put in four very strong bids for the serviced sites fund and hope for a positive announcement.

In respect of the timeline for development, to take an example, from the time we start thinking about building an extension to our home, bring an architect in to work on it, figure out what services and planning permission are needed, go to tender and get a builder, it can be quite a while before the new room is built. Scale that up to the big landbanks and that is what we are talking about. A range of baseline studies is required for housing developments such as environmental impact assessments, appropriate assessments and directives on habitats and otherwise that must be met. There is green infrastructure that must go in and we must ensure that the schemes we design take account of all those issues. In line with that there is the approvals process that we must go through and our Part VIII planning process. Fingal is very lucky in that respect. We have brought almost 30 Part VIIIs to the chamber and have had the full support of our members on all of them. To shorten the timelines, we try to do much of the work that needs to be done on a site in parallel with the planning process. There is a risk attached to that in that we might not get planning permission or the councillors might accuse us of prejudging their decision. It is a balance and we try to bring that forward and work with the councillors on that.

The real challenge is having to go through a public procurement process which does take a very long time. That is a frustration that my colleagues here will echo. We are working to see what opportunities there are in the process through other types of licence arrangements or otherwise that we can use to bring sites forward incrementally. There is value in that work and we continue to explore. I will ask Ms Egan to respond to the question on Church Fields.