Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for his questions. I thank him for welcoming the staff. He will also know Maria Graham, who has moved from the water team to the team dealing with housing and planning.

With regard to affordability, we are about to finalise the regulations to give the scheme of priority for access for people who apply to a local authority. I am waiting for feedback from a couple of key people to finalise this. Once it is finalised, which I hope I can do this week, I will write to each local authority. We are there or thereabouts on it. If not last week it was the week before that I spoke in the Dáil and listed the proposed scheme of priority with regard to someone's connection to the area, someone working in the area or someone whose children are being educated in the area. These are the various ways in which someone would access the scheme and how they would be weighted accordingly when the scheme is open. We are doing a final piece on this following what I said in the Dáil.