Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I apologise that I had to leave the meeting for a while to attend another meeting. I want to come back to two issues. On the discretionary cap, I do not accept the position the Minister has outlined. It will make a substantial difference in speeding up the delivery of social homes, which are badly needed. I do not believe it will leave the Department open to any undue risk because, as I said to the Minister previously, the local authorities are responsible and answerable to him, and most, if not all, of them have the requisite experience and expertise. Currently, county architects are sending back plans to the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government to be checked by juniors and are going back and forth in that respect. We do not need to do that. If we look at housing delivery, and the Minister spoke earlier about the target to have more than 6,000 social homes delivered this year, in the first half of this year the figure is approximately 1,000, so we are 5,000 short. How confident is the Minister in reaching that target.

On the private housing supply-----