Ms Maria Graham:

There are a couple of issues. The important aspect, in addition to giving the investment and the opportunity for investment, is about driving the programme. From the Department's perspective, all of these projects were given the funding and the local authority is in the driving seat as the sponsor. We have put in arrangements within the Department and we will be meeting local authorities regularly. I will ask Ms Clifford to come in on that in a moment. We have expanded our planning and advisory team with Mr. Logan in order that we will have advisers who would be dealing with all the different areas of the country. Part of this is to give that support and monitoring, from the Department's point of view, to see that drive.

It must be acknowledged also that there has been a Covid effect. While some housing projects, for example social housing projects, were able to continue if they were at a certain stage during construction shutdowns, the nature of the urban regeneration and development fund projects was that they were shut down if they were at construction stage. This has had a knock-on effect. We are moving very much into the mobilisation phase as well.

From a broader perspective and the actions in Housing For All around vacancy nationwide, the vacant homes officers are becoming full-time. The Senator referred to Dublin being one of the areas that has had full-time vacant homes officers. Again, from the supporting and driving perspective, the Department is establishing its own principal officer-led vacant unit, to bring together many of the aspects the committee has spoken about including the investment, regulation and funding, to have a co-ordinated approach. The Housing Agency is looking at supporting local authorities with advice through the agency's procurement unit, and through its compulsory purchase system expertise.

The final piece we will be working on from a national planning framework perspective is city delivery boards, under Project Ireland 2040. At present, we have a national Project Ireland 2040 delivery board that has all of the Secretaries General of the funding Departments, who are now external members. There will be city development boards for Dublin and for the other cities that will bring the national board to the city level and will really focus on ensuring there is integration of the spatial plans and the investment. Some of these are very big projects that can be dependent on a lot of big public investment in transport and water, as well as the mobilisation of the projects.

The other leg is that we are working with the County and City Management Association, CCMA, around resourcing of local authorities. Mr. O'Brien has touched on some of the resourcing and the town regeneration offices funded by the Department of Rural and Community Development. There is a wider resourcing issue of planning and town regeneration. We want to get to the heart of that to see what the numbers are and what the skills are, and how we can make sure that local authorities are set up for the future. There is a commitment in Housing For All to make sure that the planning resource is funded. There are a couple of elements there. Perhaps Ms Clifford will talk a little bit about how we engage with Dublin City Council.