Ms Annette Aspell:

I thank Senator Wall for acknowledging our staff in housing. I will certainly pass that on. It is much appreciated.

As for the issue with tenants in situand trying to acquire units, we require the approval of the Department, as I mentioned earlier, and we will do everything we can to ensure that those properties are purchased. I can give the Senator my assurance on that. If we need to discuss it further with the Department, we will. It is our aim to get those properties secured.

As for turnaround of vacant properties and support from the Department, we get voids funding each year. A lot of it is from our own revenue budget, as the Senator will know, but we get some funding from the Department, for which we are grateful. That is set as to what properties are to be done, so the criteria are already established. We are in agreement with the Department, we make a submission and the Department approves it, so we are getting some funding there, but that funding model is to change. Whether it will change in 2023 or 2024 I am not 100% sure, but we are moving from a voids programme to asset management. That work is ongoing in the background, so we are moving away from the current model.

As for affordable housing, we recently received confirmation of approval of three staff members to be assigned to that team, so that recruitment is ongoing. We are very grateful for that approval. It is not the total number of staff we asked for, but it is a start and we will get that section up and running and moving forward.

As Senator Wall will know, land is a key issue for us, and trying to secure additional land for our landbank is probably the number one issue we try to address in respect of our future housing programmes. We have purchased two sites this year, one of which is in Kildare town, so that site will come into our programme. We are probably facing a situation in which a lot of the acquisition we will have will be brownfield as opposed to greenfield sites because it is just not really feasible for us to compete in the latter market. However, we will keep looking for anything we can add to our landbank.

As for the energy retrofit programme, the number is just 69 this year and 175 units last year, but that included the midlands programme. That is an area where we see a need to expand year on year. We are building a programme around the funding we are getting. I think the Senator will be aware that we ran into difficulty last year with the cost per unit. It was costing us about €10,000 above the limit. This year that gap has decreased to between about €2,000 and €3,000, which is good, but we are still not recouping everything we are spending on that programme, and there are certainly issues still to be addressed to make that programme run as smoothly as it could. There are more resources to go into that area. We will need to address how we will manage that, whether it is from our revenue budget or otherwise. This year we put €1 million aside for windows and doors, so that programme is ongoing at the moment. That is from our revenue budget.

As for housing aid and housing adaptation grants, I have not heard about the issue with the funding or people not being able to complete the works, but if there is more information on that, I ask the Senator to bring it to my attention and I will follow up on it. Just yesterday our councillors passed their budget and they increased the budget in respect of the housing adaptation grants for disabled persons for next year for our own stock. That is very welcome to carry on with that programme, which was a priority for the housing staff this year.

Ardrew is being developed under a PPP, so we are locked into a programme there in respect of the number of sites. I think there are seven local authorities in that programme. The PPP tends to move at the rate of the slowest within the bundle, but that programme is moving on to the design stage.

As for working with AHBs, I am not meant to get into talking about individual AHBs, but certainly the delivery in Kildare by AHBs under the Rebuilding Ireland programme was significant. We probably built up a lot of good relationships during that time. Respond, in particular, has delivered previously in Athy and is delivering more units there, so-----