Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have pages of questions for the witnesses and I was listening to the debates earlier. Something came up earlier about 59 days waiting for nominations from local authorities and the seven-week turnover of voids. We have had local authorities here, namely, the four Dublin ones, Waterford, Limerick, Cork and Galway, and Cork is the worst at nearly 95 or 96 weeks, which is a crazy length time. All were high 40s. It might have been Waterford but one authority said that it was looking to get it below 20 weeks for local authorities. I think seven weeks is brilliant and it just shows what you can do.

The other thing is to speed things up. It goes back to the 59 days waiting for nominations. Is it possible to have people ready? Is it possible to have a short list? What would need to be done to get the turnaround even quicker? Are there changes needed in local authorities? Does it need changes in legislation? Is there a recommendation that we could bring to the Department or the Minister? I understand the point that was made earlier about Garda vetting. Garda vetting can represent a delay but you could have people vetted and ready to go. Do our guests have a request of us that we could put in our report and that would help them to improve on their already excellent times?