Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)

This is the second Revised Estimate since December but it is the third capital announcement that the Minister has made. The challenge here is that the total output of new-build social homes last year funded under this subhead was 7,860. A very large proportion of the 1,500 acquisitions would have come from that fund as well, although not all of them because some of them would have been capital acquisitions scheme, CAS, acquisitions. The social housing target has gone up by 1,000 new builds this year so that means the Minister needs to deliver 2,140 extra new builds this year to meet the target, but he is only allocating an extra €83 million over what he spent last year. I accept that there is going to be a difference in the acquisitions but if the Minister hits the 10,000 new-build target, he is going to need a Supplementary Estimate after the budget, before the end of the year. Why would he not just make provision for it now if he is confident about meeting the targets? I do not understand. It would seem to me that there is somebody, maybe not the Minister, somewhere in the system who does not have confidence that the targets will be met and that is why, in the Revised Estimate for December, the Minister is €400 million or €500 million short on the social housing side. Obviously, he got the extra funding and I am not criticising that, but there is still a big shortfall there. It could be, based on my conservative estimations, €200 million to €300 million. Is the Minister saying that he might need a Supplementary Estimate before the end of the year for that to get to the figure of 10,000 new-build social homes?