Ms Annette Aspell:

I thank the Senator. I will try to address the questions she posed. She referred to unsold affordable housing. At the end of last year we received some funding from the Department to cover the cost of, I think, 19 units. That is stock that remains from the last affordable housing scheme but they are all tenanted at the moment by social housing tenants and in active use. I sit on a national working group that is trying to come up with a solution to finally address that problem. I am part of a number of local authority officials sitting on that working group, so there is activity in that area. We hope to see a conclusion to that shortly.

On our new affordable housing scheme, we are planning to, and have some proposals in mind on how we can, develop our scheme. We were waiting for the staff to be assigned so we are very grateful the Department has now approved three staff to be appointed to the council to drive that affordable housing scheme. We will definitely see progress on that early in 2023.

Town regeneration comes within my area in terms of housing. Again, staff are being assigned to that area at the moment so we will see some further progress on that again towards the end of this year and into the next.

On Michael Garry House in Newbridge, I note the Senator's comments on that. I will just note them for today and not comment any further on that.

On the time it takes, I can comment on how long it would take to get a social housing project through the process. We aim for a 53-week turnaround but I must say it is very challenging. The land bank we have is limited, as the Senator will know. Much of the land we have has issues related to it that we must address in the form of infrastructural deficits and other issues that take time to address. While we strive to meet those targets they are difficult to achieve, but we are always actively trying to bring our projects through the process at the earliest opportunity. We want to deliver a good project ultimately and so are always mindful of that in the context of our delivery programme.

On acquisitions, as the Senator knows, we acquired Liffey Lodge at the beginning of this year. It is being used to accommodate displaced people from Ukraine but we will be progressing to feasibility and there will be a community element of that, as well as possibly age-friendly accommodation. The feasibility has to be prepared for that but that is what we are considering for the site, with a community element to that.

On the AHBs, the funding model is a 40:60 split and that is how the funding arrangement is for delivery, so that is what we have been asked to work towards.

I will have to check the figures for the Senator to see how many housing loans have been drawn down. Certainly in the first half of this year, while we were approving loans, there were very few if any being drawn down because people were struggling to find properties within the limits set under the loan scheme at the moment. We are seeing some movement on that in recent weeks but we will be keeping our eye on that to see if it improves and whether people start to draw down their loan approvals.

Demand for one-beds is significant in the county; it is very high. Obviously, the market is not really delivering one-bed units. We are working to see if we can deliver additional one-beds through Part Vs as that might supplement our stock. We are also mindful of that in our delivery programme as well. We look to acquire one-bed properties if we can, particularly through the capital assistance scheme, CAS, for one-bed deliveries there, for the categories that fit into those criteria.