Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Chair, the Minister and his officials.

I will focus on housing elements at the outset. The figure €6.8 billion is a significant sum without question and it puts us very high across Europe with regard to our expenditure on housing. However, we are in an emergency. The Minister has said he is treating the housing crisis as an emergency and I very much welcome that.

I hear from those in the sector that schemes are not being progressed through the Department as quickly as they were and that funding constraints appear to be biting in the context of schemes being greenlit. I would like commentary on that. We are in an emergency and we want to see schemes progress. We speak at length about other challenges in infrastructural deficits and so on but these schemes are ready to go and are through planning permission. Everything is ready but for some reason, they seem to be stuck. The €6.8 million clearly is not sufficient. How much money do we need to progress the scale of development we need to see? I am speaking about publicly funded development. I would like some feedback on that issue of schemes not progressing as quickly as they should or possibly not progressing at all due to funding constraints.