Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister, his Secretary General, Mr. McCarthy, and his senior staff for coming in because it is an important engagement. I want to stay focused because we are here today as a joint committee to discuss and examine the progress on the Rebuilding Ireland document. They are not aspirations or other issues that stray off, so I will keep my attention focused on this document. I said at the very outset, when the then Minister, Deputy Coveney, came in, that it is a brave politician who sets out targets that are there to be tracked and traced to hold the Minister to account and it happened two and a half years ago. The Minister is his successor and I know that he is happy to be held to account and he acknowledged the importance and the role of this committee as a statutory Oireachtas committee dealing with and effectively shadowing his Department. Again, I thank the Minister, the senior management team and the Secretary General in the Department. I have always found them to be very professional and helpful and I am conscious that they, too, need support.

I initially came in here to say that councils need support but the Department needs support and the Minister's staff need more support. That is my experience of the task at hand. Sometimes when a person is at the very centre of power and decision making, especially at the level that the Minister is at in the Department, he or she might not be conscious of the needs within his or her Department. That is not to say that the Minister is ignoring them but he is not conscious of them because he is a busy politician like most. I want to put that down as a marker because that needs to be looked at again and additional resources are needed to meet the challenges and to support the local authorities.

I am not expecting the Minister to come back with a very detailed answer to my questions now but maybe he will give a commitment to follow up on them with a written response or an email to the committee if he cannot deal with them all now. I will kick off by mentioning the Shanganagh site. I am sick to the teeth of hearing about Shanganagh Castle and the site, who will own it and who is to blame. I hear stories from local people in Dún Laoghaire that it is a matter for the Department and there is total frustration with the process. I hear another story from the elected members which is another angle on it and I hear about another problem from the people who live out in Shankill. In fairness, the Minister agreed with Deputy Boyd Barrett, whom I welcome, some months ago to have a round-table meeting with the stakeholders on this. There is so much misinformation out there that it is about time that the Oireachtas Members for that constituency, the county council members, the Minister's senior management team and the chief executive of Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council came together at one table and heard the actual story. There are too many different stories and they are not joining up. There is a general frustration because there is the potential for 500 houses and that place is in State ownership. I was talking about it to Senator McDowell, the then Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform who sanctioned the sale of the whole thing. I just wanted to flag that as an issue.

The Minister talked about Enniskerry Road and I would like an update on that.

People have said to me that if it had been left to the local authority years ago, it would have built the houses by now. There is not a house on the Enniskerry Road and I want to examine the issue.

I would like the Minister to provide an update on the Land Development Agency. We are still not aware of the timeframe for the underlying legislation. Will the Minister clarify the position?

I wish to raise the subject of An Bord Pleanála and online issues. In the context of Rebuilding Ireland, we talked about how people could engage. We talked about fast-tracking the An Bord Pleanála process. New management structures are in place there but we need the process to sharpen up and be faster. I am conscious that the Minister has to keep a certain distance from An Bord Pleanála. There is reference in Rebuilding Ireland to online engagement in the planning process, but that is not happening. People are frustrated by the process. Major reform is required.

I have some key questions for the Minister as well as some general comments. What process and checks does the Department use to display and update its data in terms of Rebuilding Ireland, specifically in terms of publication and the internal purposes of that? Are tables updated continually, for example, weekly or monthly? Sometimes I get a sense that information is gathered because the Minister is in the Dáil, for example, responding to parliamentary questions or he is coming before the committee and he gathers another load of information. I appreciate that he is a busy person. I am not here to attack the Minister but I am interested in hearing about the ongoing and continual monitoring of Rebuilding Ireland.

Pillar 1 addresses homelessness. Why has action 1.30 switched from "progress" to "ongoing"? How much progress has been made under the rapid delivery framework? Actions 1.34, 1.35 and 1.36 continue to remain categorised as "ongoing". What level of progress, if any, has been made in regard to these proposals?

Under Pillar 2, action 2.15 relates to the establishment of a regulator for the approved housing body, AHB, sector. That is overdue. Will the Minister report on progress and his intention in this regard?

Action 2.20 relates to supports for people leaving HSE accommodation and mental health services. The project was to be rolled out between 2018 and 2020. Will the Minister provide an update on how many tenancies have been created to date for those transitioning from mental health facilities to community-based living, as of today? I will come back with more questions later if there is time.