Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

What period does €631 million cover? Ms Ryan has clarified that €631 million covers just under 1,000 homes.

In terms of today's business, the pyrite remediation scheme on Old Knockmay Road was very good but painfully slow. The Part VIII process has received a lot of criticism but I know that, in general, a Part VIII can be dealt with in a matter of weeks, in other words, the planning permission was passed by councillors. However, there was a lot of toing and froing with the Department on minute details. The Department needs to give local authorities a bit of elbow room, particularly the good ones. Laois County Council has an ambitious housing programme and local authorities need to give a bit of space. I know that the Department must have oversight as a huge tranche of public money is being spent. This excellent scheme is a great example of one that came from the land aggregation scheme as it is built on that land. There is a lot of bureaucracy with the four stage process because a number of hurdles must be crossed at each stage. The scheme must be simplified down to two stages.

I wish to raise the issue of architect costs. We start with a blank canvas on each site but while we do not want Soviet-type blocks where everything looks exactly the same, surely we could have a more generic design model for a one, two and three-bed unit for a terraced or semi-detached house, or a stand-alone rural cottage, and for apartments? In 2003, the current system was brought in. Why start with a blank canvas each time? The only change is to the ground underneath. We need to reduce costs and bureaucracy because there is a huge amount of toing and froing between the design team and the local authority, between the local authority and the technical people in the Department and back again. Can we simplify the cost and timeline? Can we use a blueprint as a design for similar sized homes? There is a blueprint for most of what is designed. I am sure whoever designs the blueprint will be happy enough to get a royalty for each use. Can we do that?