Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his contribution, kind words and ongoing engagement.

I will focus on Irish Water first. In 2022, we had a capital allocation to Irish Water of about €1.4 billion. Next year it is about €1.6 billion. There is much work to be done but the good thing is that Irish Water now has sight of a multi-annual programme that is fully funded. There is certainly catching up needed. The Deputy mentioned Ballymahon. There are about 800 different settlements, towns and villages across the country and some do not have any wastewater plants to speak of at all. However, the capital programme is expanding. The Deputy asked about my interaction with Irish Water. I deal with it weekly. With regard to housing delivery, Irish Water has appointed at senior level a Housing for All officer so where we have blockages within the system, if members can excuse the pun, Irish Water is at the table on the housing delivery side of things to unblock them. An example of this is allowing builders to self-lay based on certification. We ran a pilot programme I started in the July I became Minister. That has expanded now. We get contractors in who are fully certified and can do the self-lay and connections to water and wastewater right out to the public road. That has been working well and is expanding across the country. It is reducing the delivery times, particularly around connections, which were a big issue. Connections remain an issue in some parts of the country but it is absolutely getting better and from my own visits across the country I am picking that up on the ground.

The Deputy asked about notices to quit. It is something many Deputies have shown an interest in. I will be very clear with the committee. I am engaging with local authorities every day and they have been told to purchase homes with tenants in situwhere the tenant is a HAP or RAS tenant and has been issued a notice to quit. The most recent figures I have so far on this show that since the initiative came in around 700 homes have either been completed or are in the process of being completed and there are more coming in every day. That is bringing more units into our public housing stock and saving people from going into homelessness as well.

On affordable housing schemes, we are working with Longford County Council. I met with its officials on this specifically, as the Deputy knows. I have approved 30 schemes across the country through the local authority affordable purchase scheme and the affordable housing fund. Within that we will deliver about 2,000 homes and those are being added to every month. There are counties that were not initially in it like Limerick and Westmeath. We will have a scheme in from Mayo shortly. There is also Clare. We are seeing it expanding right across the country and obviously there is Dublin, Cork, Waterford and elsewhere.

We will respond in writing on anything the Deputy raised that we did not get to.