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

Will the Department come back to us with the hard figures on that for where we are at the end of June, insofar as it has the information? There is a big budget, and rightly so. The more the merrier. The Committee of Public Accounts wants to see what returns we are getting. I am not clear and would like to have a clearer picture of it.

I have complained to Ministers about the all the different stages that must be gone through and all the rigmarole that local authorities have to go through to get approval and all the delays. In the popular mind, and sometimes in the media, it is put forward as being because of planning permission but Mr. Kelly and I both know, as will most people here who have been on a local authority, that Part 8 planning permission passed by councillors will go through in two months. It may be that it is held up for four weeks. Sometimes a Part 8 will come in and councillors will say, "Hang on, there is a problem with the design" because of road safety or something. There might be a need to come back with different boundary types or something or another issue in the area might need to be sorted. Officials will take those observations on board, work with the local councillors and come back and get it through. It might take 12 weeks. I have always seen them go through very quickly and that is still the case, that is my observation, so it is not being held up at that level. There is also a single-stage process now. I do not want to go back over it but some local authorities were looking to use that.

In 2002 or 2003 the Department made a decision that all houses would be architecturally designed. I could take the officials to the last houses designed by Laois County Council. They are easy to maintain, very practical and look very good and I could take them to the first ones that are designed by an architect. I can outline the problems created in private - I will not take up the meeting with it - not least the sewage pipe running down beside a chimney stack. There is methane gas in the sewage pipe. What happens when someone lights a sitting room fire. Gas rises and you have gas upstairs in the house and it has to be evacuated. There are situations in a number of local authorities where designs go back and forward between the council and the Department. In one case there a question over the canopy over the front door. We cannot mass produce houses like this. It is too cumbersome. I am saying this in a helpful way. I drive here via the Naas Road in the morning. I am not saying that we should recreate 1938 or anything but look at the design that was used. Thousands of houses were built using it. It was a great design at the time. You would not use it now but in the last local authority scheme that opened the footprint was very like them. The front and back gardens were similar. The footprint is the same and the things that have changed are the energy ratings and so on but they have a small sitting room, kitchen, bathroom, two down and three up in a larger house. Sometimes we need bungalows because people have different needs. They might have to be on a flat level because of disabilities. We need different types of houses, one-, two-, three- and four-beds. We know all that. Why in the name of God with every housing development do we have to start with a blank canvass? I am not only thinking of people on the housing waiting list. I know that people who want to buy an affordable house or a private house have said to me that they do not care what the design looks like if the house is functional and comfortable. That is what they want. I am not advocating that we do what Russia did in the 1920s, 1930s or 1940s by putting up tower blocks or that we do another Ballymun. I am not arguing for anything like that but I am asking why we cannot have half a dozen types of houses. We do not need an architect to design every bloody house or new estate that has to be done. What we need to deal with is infrastructure and the layout of the estate. If documents have to keep going back and forward between the local authorities and the Department we cannot produce the housing. I welcome that the Minister granted the money for more staff. That is helpful and it will speed up things but we have to take our foot off the necks of those who are charged with delivery at local level. If it is two-bedroom terraced houses that are wanted we can say "there is the design", and similarly if it is a three-bedroom bungalow or one-bedroom maisonette or little bungalow for pensioners, or a four-bed. Why can we not do that?