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

The Department is still caught on the design issue. I welcome the fact that there is standardisation. That makes sense. I get that. The Department is talking about design and build to councillors, developers and builders. I say we hand it to them and say, "There's the drawing. We want 50 of those." Until we get to that point, we are wasting money on architectural fees and time and are tying up people in the Department and local authorities. We dealt with this at times when this country had damn all resources, including the 1950s. They built houses that were good quality for the time. People were over the moon about these houses, which now make a lot of money on the open market, although this was not what they were built for. My point is that these were good functional houses. Standardisation is not enough. We have not gone far enough. There is a bigger leap to be made. I am asking the Department to go away and consider this.