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

-----whereas institutional investors are making a 40-year play and will abide by the laws because they have got a board, shareholders and everyone else to report to and provide good accommodation and everything else. There is a balance to be struck and we will try to strike that balance as we work through the proposals the Deputy will present next week.

With regard to social housing delivery, we have seen this every year. We will get there in terms of quarter 1 to quarter 2 to quarter 3 to quarter 4. It is just a matter of how to programme in the build each year. It happened in 2017, and I was there for the end of 2017, and it happened throughout the course of 2018. We do not simply let them off for the year and tell them we will see them at the end of the year. I did a review in the middle of the year. We continue to engage, through the housing delivery office, to make sure that different sites are progressing as we expect.

On the point the Deputy raised about the cap of €2 million to €6 million, we have projects, two of which are in Wicklow, being delivered through the four-stage process in fewer than 43 weeks. That is even quicker than what the one-stage process would allow for. What we have seen is local authorities bringing forward programmes where it is €750,000 per social housing home. If that was to happen through the one-stage process, we would only get sight of it at the very end, at which point we would have to say it is not value for money and go back to the drawing board, which would result in even further delays.

My concern, and this was always an issue in terms of the public spending code and a derogation to be got from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, is that, on review, and we can sit down and talk about this off-line, so to speak, we might believe this to be a reckless way to approach capital spending through the local authorities and not something either of us will want to pursue. If the Deputy were in my seat, and he might well be in six months' time, would he be happy if he did not believe he had proper oversight of 44% of his capital budget, given that he is the person who will be reporting to the committee on actual delivery by the local authorities every quarter and every year?