James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator. We have serious variation across the country in terms of housing delivery. When we get under the hood of it, we can see that while some local authorities might be meeting their overall social housing targets, they are doing very little self-building. We need the local authorities to be doing their own-build social housing because it adds to the housing stock rather than purchasing turnkey units from local developers that might otherwise have been selling those units on the private market. I am obviously encouraging the local authorities to undertake self-building. Part of this was the publication of the delivery record of local authorities so people can see the information and compare and contrast. That has very much been welcomed by TDs and councillors in those local authorities who can now do that proper and appropriate comparison. I met the CEOs of the local authorities and their directors and senior planners to encourage them. We are looking at it. There have been suggestions in the past that we could perhaps look at some kind of penalties for local authorities not delivering, but in my experience that simply results in the most vulnerable in those local authority areas suffering, so it is not a route I would consider going down.