Mr. John McCarthy:

Absolutely and, as I said at the outset, our focus is on working with local authorities, approved housing bodies and all of the stakeholders that have a role to play in delivering on this plan for us.

I will deal with the questions in reverse order. In response to Senator Boyhan, where any actions in a quarterly progress report are delayed, the intention is that we would give an update on those in the following progress report. There were five or six actions in the third quarter reports that were delayed and we will give an update on all of those in the next quarterly report in the next few weeks. I believe they are almost all done. The Senator mentioned the An Bord Pleanála action, in particular. That implementation plan has been published and is on the Department's website. There is no problem with providing the Senator with the list of the 21 local authorities that have applied for funding under the LIHAF.

Regarding Deputy Cowen's points about ramping up progress, in an earlier response I referred to all of the projects that are in the system at present. When something gets approved at stage 1 it must go through the design and procurement process to get it to construction and to get boots on the ground. Over the course of 2016 projects would have moved through that approval process very extensively. We will publish a list of all the projects - we are currently updating it - and their position in the various stages. We will publish that on our website and send a copy to the committee at the same time. To give the Deputy a sense of the activity ramping up, in 2016 just over 50 construction projects with approximately 700 units would have started construction on site. On site starts, on the basis of the progress of projects to date and the work that local authorities will carry out, we estimate there will be approximately 200 projects with 2,800 units starting on site this year.

With the progressive ramping up from last year to this year, it demonstrates a significant uptick.