Mr. Ciar?n O'Connor:

I have some slides I would like to show as part of the presentation. We were asked by the Government at the end of June, last summer, to do 500 units and that was then brought up to 700. We are in the process of executing those. The first group of units will be handed over in two weeks' time and the units will continue to flow throughout the summer to the end of the year. We have learned a lot in that whole process. We have brought an industry that we could say was at junior infants level to secondary school level. The question is where it goes hereafter.

The slides show pictures of the model first, and then the finished housing units on the left side. They are fully fitted out and they are delivered with all the stuff in them. They are effectively what is called "plug and play". You plug in your electrics, sewers and video, all that element. How do we get that? We developed a plan that would work. The plan is based on meeting the housing standard as well as the building regulations. We set a centralised standard because the problem we found was that the industry was working to different standards, and some with effectively no standards. To create a level playing field, we centralised a standard, fixed a design to give certainty to manufacturers and to aid speed of delivery, and we put in certain options within that. That then met all the different standards.

The standards and quality were set up. To achieve that, we have a 60-year structural lifespan. We are in compliance with the building regulations, allowing for the future of renewables. We are insulated to an A2 standard. We are fully wired, plumbed, and tested. All of that stuff is done, including the generation of heat from the extraction of air in the unit itself. It is fully finished, so when it is delivered to the site all that has to happen is for it to be physically connected to the system.

The next slide is a key one for people to pick up on. The one on the left is two-dimensional panelising, and the one on the right is 3D. There is a big difference. People get confused. I notice RTÉ got confused between the two of them the other evening. Both have a job to do and both have a role to play. It is not an either-or, nor is one system a silver bullet to solve housing problems, but in conjunction with each other they can both work very well. The difference with the 3D is that the building comes complete and is just physically fitted on the site. What happens with the 2D is that it is like a LEGO kit. It arrives on the site and then it is assembled. They are the differences.

The key benefits of that were speed of delivery, programme certainty and a turnkey approach. We reduced site works, improved health and safety standards and there was a high quality of control. The buildings are also portable and can actually be lifted up. If, for instance, Ireland wanted to give these to Ukraine as part of its rebuilding, they could be lifted, put onto a ship and sent over there. They could also be kept here.

We looked at exemplar site layouts and decided to do different varieties. We combined two units. The benefit was that we got higher densities but it also gave the option that one building could be connected to the other in the future and, therefore, meet a whole standard for a house. As I said, we got the densities up to between 35 and 45 units per hectare, which means we are at sustainable residential development in urban areas. The infrastructure that has gone in is all permanent and built to social housing standard. Requirements for car parking, parking for disability and all other elements are complied with in full. There is also compliance with the design manual for roads and streets.

We then brought in an element we have been developing internally in the OPW related to sustainability and biodiversity. All this material is kept on-site. It is not being brought off-site at a cost. Planting has been brought in, which creates a buffer between neighbours and the new development. It is similar to an approach we took for the new forensic science building near Celbridge. There are no invasive species and there is biodiverse planting and no landfill element. The insulation is to an A2 standard.

A number of sites are currently at phase 1 and phase 2. Phase 1 was the first 500 houses and phase 2 was the follow-on 200 houses. Members can see from the slides that we have a variety of different sites spread throughout the country, all of which will finish in a certain time period. The first will be ready in Cork on 18 May and will be followed by sites in Claremorris, Thurles, Doorly Park, Cavan, Clonminch and Rathdowney. What do these sites look like? We might first look at the Mahon site in Cork. None of the sites we had were Housing for All sites. They were all left over from other areas and were nearly all local authority sites. OPW supplied four key sites, which amounts to about 40% of the total. The Mahon site had been used for illegal purposes such as fly tipping and all sorts of other things. All of that has been cleared up and 64 new units have gone in with roads and so forth all meeting modern standards. The photos in the slides were taken last Thursday.

The next slide shows Farnham Road in County Cavan. Members can see a drone shot showing the 28 different units in position. The landscaping is about to commence. Moving on to Thurles, I must compliment the local Deputies on being very welcoming, as were the local GAA club and other groups. It was a pleasure to deal with that group and it should be mentioned because that was not always the case. The next slide features Claremorris and shows 28 modular houses coming to conclusion. The last example is Doorly Park where 22 houses needed to be put in. What was tricky about this site is that it is beside Lough Gill and we had to make sure there was no pollution and so forth. That has all been done.

This leads us to the major benefit. While the State invested money in developing these homes as a result of an emergency, we were anxious to get to the point where this would be of development benefit to Ireland Inc. going forward. We have, therefore, looked at how to do two- and three-storey houses and we have now cracked that. We are about to go out to tender for one of the sites on which we will use two-storey units.

The trick has always been about how we make and connect these building safely without having to erect scaffolding on site. We have come up with a unit that we break into four pieces. Members can see from the slide the red lines dotted along a wall within the building.

We then make up those four units and transport them to site, where they are craned in and locked together. Looking at the next slide, the tricky part always was how to get this to work. We have to get the units under bridges that are 4.5 m in height. Therefore, there is an element that drives the design that no one would be conscious of. We developed a system whereby we can do a monopitch roof, which is a single-sloped roof, or a dual-pitched roof, and we can get over the box-like effect that most of the units have by connecting the unit. Through the layout of the plan, the units can also face in different directions because of orientation and the like. We have worked through all of those elements. We have detailed up that building, which is going out to tender in the next week and a half. We are hoping to have prices back two weeks after that.

The next slide details what the unit looks like. It can have various finishes. The interior could have a timber finish, a metal finish or whatever. The outside also has different finishes. The example shown in the slide has a brick slip finish, which is actually clipped onto the system as it is put up. The advantage of that is that there is no scaffolding on site. The unit comes in, and we have worked out where the joints go and all of that. It has a standing seam roof, which gets over the problem of roofs that give you trouble over time.

The next slide sets out how the installation translates into different settings in different parts of the country, including Dublin and a variety of areas around the country, and how the energy element and the renewables work. We are able to get a building energy rating, BER, of A2 for the unit throughout. This is a good rating to get.

The next slide illustrates how the layout is done. We can produce a number of the singular units. We are also in discussions with the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth about bringing in two-storey units, which will still provide the same number of bed spaces. As already stated, however, the key is the spin-off that Ireland Inc. can get from all the effort and work that is done. It will give us the densities that we need and the longer term use, but it will also open up an area of the building industry that was not open previously. We have also had discussions with our colleagues in Coillte about the use of timber and elements of that. I have been involved with Coillte in producing a book called Woodspec. Mr. O'Toole and I are working on that at the moment. It will set the new standards for Irish timber. We are trying to get all of those cross links in place.

I will finish with a slide which shows the five different manufacturers. When we started off, there were 12 companies that said they could manufacture the units. We have ended up with five that can really do it. They have been working very well. Some of them are producing 18 to 25 units a week. That is significant. It took a bit of time to scale that up. The biggest problems that we had were not with the units, but the sites. If we had had the sites earlier, the buildings would have been ready earlier. As I said earlier, from junior infants to secondary school, as it were, we now have an industry that can stand on its own two feet, but what it needs is a pipeline of work, security in funding, and a commitment that it is part of the wider context. I will finish there.