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

Sure. As I said in response to previous questioners, we will have very strong social housing delivery this year.

It will be a record year for delivery as regards new schemes that have come forward. Taking cost rental for argument's sake, since the start of November we have approved an additional 1,650 homes and they are large-scale developments in our cities. There are apartment developments. I will not mention specific areas but we will publish that shortly once the contracts are signed. We will see sites commence, and some have already commenced. We are looking at developments in our cities of hundreds of really good-quality cost-rental and social apartments. We were able to get them due to the changes we made to the cost-rental equity loan, CREL, increasing the cost-rental equity loan facility but also bringing that equity piece further. It has helped to unlock developments, particularly in areas where planning permissions were paused. The State is investing in them to deliver safe, secure, affordable rents for working people. Also, the changes we made to the net income limits - in Dublin it is €66,000 and outside of Dublin it is €59,000 - have meant that more people are able to access it. We are looking at very significant apartment delivery now. Schemes have been approved and will be announced in the next number of weeks. For some of them, we partnered with tier 3 housing bodies and ones that all of the Deputies here will be familiar with. This is a very good thing because we are delivering apartments for the first time.