Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)

I thank the Minister. He mentioned the issue of new builds for local authorities. It was good to see in the housing plan the desire to move to new-build units within local authorities that were leading on new building but it was disappointing not to see any reflection of that in the Supplementary Estimates. Local authorities do not currently have the funding, in my view and from what they are telling me, to really lead on increasing and ramping up the direct build by local authorities.