Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)

I suppose it is the issue of an increase in the expenditure allocation to housing automatically translating into more units but if inflation costs are increasing beyond what the increased allocation is then, similar to what Deputy Ó Broin said, we will not actually achieve an increase in units. This is something that needs to be in the public domain and in the arguments and discussions about the budget. It is not just a case that we need more housing delivered. There has been an increase in construction costs and, therefore, to get an increased output, there will need to be a significant increase in the budget allocation. It links to the question regarding the Department of public expenditure coming back to the Department of housing and stating what is not allowed and what is being allocated.

I was struck by what the Minister just said regarding a project's funding depending on the Department putting out a call and getting an excess of applications. In a housing emergency and in this situation, on what basis would the Department turn down a project? Is it that it literally does not have a sufficient budget to allocate to all of the applications or are there applications that have problems?