Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank our guests for their presentations. I acknowledge the good work of the staff in the local authority sector and in the approved housing body sector in delivering social and affordable housing. I often feel if they were listened to more often, we would be a lot further on than we are. That is an argument for the Minister and not one for this meeting.

The purpose of these sessions is to focus on housing delivery. I will ask questions of both the organisations that are represented before the committee today. I wish to discuss challenges, if not obstacles, that we are currently facing and to see if our guests have ideas or suggestions that might be helpful to the committee's deliberations. I will have to step out briefly to speak in the Dáil Chamber but I ask our guests not to worry because I will be back to ask them more questions in the second or third rounds, if we get that far.

My first question is for the CCMA. I received a reply to a parliamentary question a couple of weeks ago about the length of time it is taking to get projects through the four-stage approval process with the Department. As our guests will know, individual projects are meant to get through within 59 weeks but only five local authorities met that target. That is not a criticism of the local authorities. I have enormous sympathy for directors of housing and the level of bureaucracy that is imposed on them. Bearing in mind the review the Department has completed of the pre-construction delivery process and, more generally, the four-stage approval, tendering and procurement process, are there further reforms that could be made to try to assist the acceleration of the delivery of homes that are in the pipeline or coming into the pipeline?

My second question relates to the cost ceilings for new-builds, properties under Part 8 and turnkey properties. Those ceilings were revised in quarter 2 of last year. We have seen construction sector inflation between then and now. How much of a problem are we facing? Are contractors coming back and saying they can no longer deliver the project within the cost ceilings? Do we need to revisit those cost ceilings at this stage in line with the expected further inflation of costs in the construction sector?

I will turn to the Housing Alliance. I will be diplomatic when I say the alliance is on a bit of a fool's errand in looking for the capital advance leasing facility, CALF, to be grant aid. I am not sure it will find a lot of support for that position from the Government or from some of us in opposition. If it was an equity stake, would that get the members of the Housing Alliance who have a particular problem over that obstacle? The reason I am suggesting an equity stake is that I happen to be of the view that the State should hold on to some interest in the homes the alliance is delivering well beyond the lifetime of the people currently in the approved housing body sector. Would an equity stake resolve those problems?

I know our guests have not mentioned the payment and availability, P&A, report but particularly for projects in rural areas, how urgent is it that we get a resolution of the P&A review in terms of fixing that particular problem? I have some other questions I will ask in the second round.