Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy O'Callaghan. Those were good questions. As we deal with the Estimates every year, I am reminded of the broad range of areas that fall under the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, including everything from Met Éireann to the National Parks and Wildlife Service to housing, which is obviously one of the priorities for this Government to deliver on.

As someone who was involved in big civil projects over the years, I know that when doing a project, you can get a really good run at it and end up drawing down more money than you expected within that timeframe, or you can hit a blockage and not be able to draw down money. It is always difficult to try to marry annual budgets to actual projects as they go along. That is probably one of the difficulties in that there is an underspend for some reason and the funding gets reallocated to something else. That adds to the difficulty for many of the people looking in today, given we are talking about huge figures here.

The output of housing for this year is 33,000 or slightly more. Apart from the public moneys that are allocated to deliver 33,000 units, we also need private investment to get up to that figure. Although there is no fixed figure, we all agree that something like 50,000 houses is going to be the next incremental target to be reached. How much more does the Minister think will have to be allocated from the Department’s public spend and from private investment to reach that?