Tony McCormack (Offaly, Fianna Fail)

The questions I was going to ask were asked by previous speakers but I will make a bit of a statement. First, I am delighted the group was set up. It is fantastic. The fact that it will look at what is delaying projects and pull whatever is delaying projects out of the whole system. I am also delighted to hear about the group looking at bottlenecks and bringing in specialists to see where they are and again taking them out of the system if it is not working. We all know the issues from dealing with people. As a former councillor and now a TD, I hear from builders and council officials about the issues they have and the different processes and procedures they have to go through to get a project across the line and how long it takes. For instance, if we look at housing with the likes of Offaly County Council, it could take five years from the time it starts dealing with the Department to getting the houses built. When we know we are in an emergency situation, a lot of those processes could be whipped out and they are not adding value to the whole thing. The group and the work it does is vital. It is important that the work be done in an expedited fashion because of the fact that in the likes of housing, in a lot of cases the power and water infrastructure is creaking at the seams and we have issues with it. In my county, Offaly, we cannot build any more houses after the houses that already have planning permission because of the water infrastructure that is there. The power infrastructure is not so bad at the moment but if we increase the housing, we may meet problems there.

Another issue is coming down the track and I do not know whether people are aware of it, although I hope they are. For new power stations or substations being built by the ESB, they have to order in transformers and other parts from different parts of the world, which can take up to a year at the moment. However, when we start rebuilding the likes of Gaza and Ukraine when the wars there end, which we hope they will do very shortly, all these suppliers are going to come under huge pressure and it may take us longer to get those parts when we still need that infrastructure in place now and going forward. As I said, it is vital that we get value for money without delays in the process that the group is going through and with everything happening quickly because we need the infrastructure. In the Department's case, we need it to be able to fund, but we need the infrastructure in place to be able to provide the services we need, whether that be in housing, healthcare, education or whatever it is. I know the Department is in charge of the purse strings. I am looking forward to working with the Department but I cannot stress enough how urgent its work is. We cannot have any delays.