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

In the simplest terms, I have given the Chair the figures for what we are doing in housing delivery overall. It will be a successful year in relation to housing delivery. It will be a good year for social and affordable housing delivery. In areas where we see that there will be under-delivery, we are right to look at where we can reallocate that money to ensure we are delivering more homes in other categories, such as CAS, or that we are buying land to be able to improve the pipeline we have into the future. That is the beauty of a multi-annual programme and that is how we know, as I speak here today, that we have about 23,000 social homes in the pipeline and under construction. We never had that before now. It is building up, year on year.

I am not referring to Deputy O'Callaghan, but some Deputies do not want to recognise the progress that is being made. It is moving in the right direction quite significantly. We have to be flexible within our Vote, to see how we can spend our money better. In the real world, schemes get delayed. That will always be the case, regardless of who is Minister, whether it be Deputy O' Callaghan, Deputy Ó Broin or Deputy Matthews. There will be real life issues that arise, which means that some schemes do not conclude on time. That means we are not going to pay them out fully in that year. We need to have the flexibility to be able to look at what we are spending, determine how we can spend it to the best effect and make sure we are building a pipeline for delivery into the next year. That is the sensible thing to do.