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

I thank the Deputy for her kind words, her support and the work she does daily. I will first deal with the questions on the resource side. We improved on the social housing staff by 250. That is within all our housing teams across the country. As of the end of September, 180 of those posts were filled. The jobs market is very hot at present, which is a good thing, in that we are nearing full employment. There have been challenges filling those positions but they are additional posts; they are not back-filling. As regards affordable housing, I have initially approved 69 new posts across local authorities to deliver affordable housing. That is currently in train. That approval was given eight or ten weeks ago and the local authorities are working it through. Some of them have people in place already. I will revert to the Deputy with a progress update. As more affordable homes are delivered, we will add to that number of staff based on where there is demand and need.

I will revert to the Deputy on the project in Saggart. She has raised it with me previously.

On cost rental and affordable, we made significant changes to the cost rental equity loan, CREL, and its structure, which have already seen us get in new cost rental schemes. Members may have seen such a scheme this week in Delgany, County Wicklow. It is the first Land Development Agency, LDA, cost rental scheme in place. I want to see more. I want to see local authorities doing advance purchase too, for affordable housing. There are specific opportunities for that to be done.

In terms of what we are doing right now, particularly in urban areas, this is managed by the LDA through Project Tosaigh. It has been engaging on the ground in respect of unactivated planning permissions or permissions that may have stalled - jobs that were going to happen but are not currently proceeding. We will seek to activate them, with a big focus on affordable. Members will also see that happening in south Dublin. I mentioned to Deputy Flaherty earlier that under the affordable housing fund we have approved approximately 30 schemes already, with approximately 2,000 homes in train. We will see the first of them in this year. That fund does not deal with the first home scheme or cost rental. I would like it to be quicker but we are progressing the activation of existing planning permissions for affordable housing. Obviously social housing falls within that too, but there is a focus on affordable housing. There is a real opportunity for us to do that, particularly given the significant exit, not just in Ireland but across Europe, of private rented sector, PRS, investment in build to rent. There are opportunities for us to build cost rental and affordable purchase. That is what we are looking at doing. We have been out there. We have had a lot of interest and engagement with the sector on that.

As regards maternity leave, I brought a Bill to Cabinet on behalf of the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, and got approval for maternity leave for councillors, which is really important. They will be able to co-opt a person to take their place for the period. The Bill also deals with ill health, paternity leave, adoption and so on. I know we will get support from across the House on the Bill. I expect it to come in during quarter 1. Any changes will take effect from next year. We have engaged with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth to ensure it also covers people who are in same-sex relationships. It does not just provide for maternity leave; it also provides for paternity leave, adoption leave and other circumstances. It will be flexible. We need to ensure, particularly for women, that we have a working environment for councillors that is family friendly. Only 24% of councillors are women. We need to do far better than that.

As regards rising energy costs, that relates to local authorities' facilities. Basically, it is local authority-owned buildings, as well as fuel for council vehicles and so on. Those allocations have just been sent out to the local authorities. It is €60 million. For the information of the committee, as a result of rate appeals and the global rate revaluation, local authorities across the country were down approximately €23 million. We are going to fill that gap for them. That relates to the big utilities, such as the ESB, Irish Water and so on. I am a firm believer in local government, as is every Deputy present.

Particularly at a difficult time with energy costs etc., we need to ensure they can continue the services they are providing. Those allocations have been made.

The Deputy made a very good point about the strong delivery for quarter 4. While that is a good thing and historically we have always had strong delivery in quarter 4, I would like to move to a more phased model of delivery. In any year there are risks with so much delivery in quarter 4. This year because of what happened in March, April and May with the supply chain, I do not think anything could have been done. Some sites stopped because of inflation. The work done on the inflation framework got them back going. Particularly for larger schemes, I would like to see the handover take place in phases to reduce the risk for any schemes moving into the next year.