Ms Jeanette Mair:

I support what Mr. Parlon said. There are multiple issues around housing delivery but, through the Rebuilding Ireland programme, the Department has done significant work to put better structures in place. There are still issues at local planning authority level, which we have touched on, including delays at the pre-planning stage. There are delays before developers even get to site. The delay is not related to being on site when everything is ready and the houses can be built. The LIHAF was a welcome Government initiative. It was oversubscribed when more than €200 million was allocated to it originally. Budget 2018 allocated a further €75 million to the fund, which was hugely welcomed by local authorities and the building sector which are working in partnership and employing civil engineering contractors and so on to open up the lands. Planning permission for a housing development will not be granted until the wastewater treatment plant or access roads are in place. The problem with housing delivery is that it takes time. The resourcing from administration through to planners at local authority level should be a significant focus of the committee, as it is a significant focus of the Department. There has been a ramping up of resources in respect of planning and building standards throughout the local government sector. That is one of the major delay factors. I acknowledge there is debate in the media and so on around the statistics we use and the ESB connections which give us our completion figures. Completions are increasing and, more important, commencements increased to approximately 15,000 for the first ten months of this year, which is a 45% increase on 2016. We are on course to deliver approximately 18,500 houses this year and that will increase, according to our forecast, to 22,500 next year. We are incrementally increasing annual housing supply to the 25,000 homes the ESRI estimates that we need. The national planning framework has clear guidelines relating to where housing projects and population increases will be located up to 2040. We need in the region of 550,000 new homes. What is not mentioned is the pent-up demand and the additional supply that will have to come on stream over the next five years, particularly around some urban centres. Planning permissions have increased and supply will improve significantly but it will all not come on stream this year. Supply will increase incrementally over the next few years and, hopefully, by 2021, we should be up at the level of house building we need to be at to maintain supply.