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

I understand the question. We want to be more precise than that. When we set the targets this year, we will have to see what would be the commitment of any future Government or the Exchequer to deliver those homes. When we deliver affordable, social and cost rental, it unlocks other private developments. A lot of the developments that we are seeing now, including some superb ones in the Chairman's area of Wicklow, are multi-tenure developments. That is what we want to see. The social and affordable investment actually unlocks private investment. As I mentioned earlier, we are looking at the affordable housing fund and how we can position that. It has worked well in some local authorities but others need more support on it, to be frank. It is about how we can point that significant level of investment to get improved outcomes. The First Home scheme is a case in point and shows that for smaller Exchequer moneys, we can deliver more and have a greater impact.

We have had to be flexible over the period. The Chairman mentioned the underspends that were there. There was a reality in previous years when we could not build, effectively, and we had supply chain issues, so we rightly reallocated moneys. All day long, I will stand over the land acquisition fund, which means that local authorities and AHBs can apply to us to purchase lands. That will build our pipeline into the future. It is not short-termism but is looking into the medium and long terms to build up our land banks. Writing down the debt on local authorities that had encumbered sites was something that absolutely needed to be done. Having talked to the local authorities that were affected, I know some of them thought it would never be done. Again, that has unlocked those lands for future developments.

When people look back at those decisions in a couple of years, they will see they were the correct decisions for medium-term delivery. We have to look past the short term, year-on-year, and see how we can build a pipeline further towards the end of the decade.