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

I will leave housing at that and I will be happy to take any questions members have on the issue.

I will speak on water services for less than a minute. We are providing more than €1.3 billion to Irish Water in 2021. We provided an additional €88 million in capital after I was appointed last year and this year, an additional €100 million has been provided. It is badly needed, particularly in the regions and rural areas. We will have a review of the NDP this year and I will bring forward some initiatives with regard to areas that do not have the required wastewater treatment or freshwater capacity. My Department will ensure that Irish Water is funded. I recently published a White Paper and the stakeholders in the water sector have been invited by the Workplace Relations Commission, WRC, to meet so that we can move towards a single publicly-owned utility model.

We are tight on time, which is not of my making. I have not covered heritage, planning or local government. I mean no disrespect to those areas but they have been covered in the briefing and are addressed in the statement supplied. If there are questions in that regard, I am happy to take them.