Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I understand that, but it should not be. What we are talking about here is new builds. That is our understanding, according to the briefing notes. We had the Housing Agency here last week. We follow this closely. I do not know whether other members are aware of it but this is the first time I heard it. That figure needs to be taken out of it.

In relation to delivery, because this is a real crunch issue, I have raised with the Secretary General previously the issue of generic designs. Nobody, whether politician, official, architect, local government official or anyone else, has ever explained this to me. There is no reason we cannot have generic designs for one, two, three and four-bedroom houses, single storey for disabled people and two-storey for family apartments. We used to do this. We know it works because one can see the evidence of it all over the country in decades gone by. As I have told the Secretary General previously, this is not about lowering the standards to those of 1940 or anything like that. It is about building generic houses to the 2023 standards - A-rated houses. Instead of that, every local authority is starting with a blank canvas. One is paying architects' fees. I checked again this week. Architects' fees of between 8% and 12% of the overall cost are going on it. People in the sector believe that it is madness. I believe that it is worse than that. It is slowing down delivery because one has to get approval from the Department, back and forth, for design.

I raised this and the Secretary General stated that he would look at this and come back to me. Why can we not have generic designs with which we can mass produce houses? I am not talking about low quality. I am not talking about what looks like the Soviet Union in 1940. I am not talking about any of that. I am talking about good-quality housing. I have given the Secretary General examples in the past of good quality housing that his Department approved - A-rated houses. Why can we not take that and replicate it across the country? Who is stopping it? Did the Secretary General raise this with the Minister, or who is stopping this?