Micheál Carrigy (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael)

I have a few points myself. On the Minister’s last point on consistency, and on circulars being issued to local authorities, there seems to be a disparity in the amounts being spent. I think €11,000 per unit is refundable. My local authority has done significant work to reduce the number of voids from the high of probably two years ago to a low now. We are down in the region of €5 million if we compare the cost of bringing the houses back into stock with what we got from the Department. I ask the Minister to consider this because it has put us in a very tight situation. Mine is a very small local authority.

I have a few more points. The affordable housing figure was €155 million. Should that be higher? There should be more schemes available throughout the country. In the whole county of Longford, no private housing has been built since 2008. The affordable housing, whose associated scheme was sanctioned just recently, is only being built at the minute. Therefore, no couple has had the possibility of buying a new home for the past 15 years. We need to consider rolling out more schemes like affordable housing schemes or local authority serviced sites. In towns where large serviced sites were developed by local authorities and sold to young families, those families are still living there in many cases, yet there seems to be a very minimal number of serviced sites in development. The croí cónaithe figure is €80 million, and that includes the local authority serviced sites. The croí cónaithe scheme has been very successful. I have seen how many houses have been upgraded through it all over rural Ireland, but should more money be drawn down under such schemes throughout the country to provide more serviced sites in local authority areas? Are some local authorities actually providing them, or what is the reason? Those are my first couple of points.