Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The witnesses have brought sunshine today because we have had many bleak sessions and have been tearing our hair out wondering how to move forward with the housing and homelessness crisis. We have needed to get through much in the past month.

I welcome that the agency has funds and can fast-track them within a couple of weeks. Do the witnesses accept that local authorities have a large part to play going forward, to coin a phrase? The witnesses may not have the answer now - it is not a problem as they can forward it to us - but how many local authorities applied to the agency for finance in the past five years, how many were successful and how many were unsuccessful or was it Government policy that local authorities would not build? Local authorities appeared before us at one of our early sessions. They told us that they did not have the finance and, even had they been allowed to build whatever they wanted, they could only have supplied between 10% and 15% of what was needed. They also pointed out that they were local authorities, not builders. The agency has given us a ray of hope, but there seem to be obstacles wherever we turn. What are the witnesses' thoughts on this matter?