Mr. Eddie Taaffe:

It would not be 15%. For example, what we do in Wexford is we design the architectural element of it in-house and then we might go out for later phases. We do not outsource it all; we do some of it in-house with our own teams. If you outsourced everything for engineers, quantity surveyors and all those tender documents, you could be talking about 12% to-15%, depending on the project.

On cost rentals for older people, this morning, Ms Leech and I sat on a group looking at housing policy for older people, which will form part of the new plan. The policy around cost rental for older people as they retire and their income takes a significant reduction is being looked at in that plan with regard to how it is going to be dealt with. I do not know what policy will be in on that but I know it is certainly going to be part of that.

On over-the-shop, that is absolutely correct. Some of these properties realistically are just not fit for refurbishment and in some cases should be demolished and converted or maybe amalgamated and put into what we call an infill or backyard development where we allow new houses to built on that spot. That is happening. We probably need to do more of it but the issue for us is that if you were to put social housing into that, by the time you have bought the site, demolished the houses and built the four houses, you would have a very expensive scheme. That is not to say it is not the right thing to do because we have to repopulate our town centres. It is about doing a mix of that, as well as the greenfield development, and local authorities are starting to do that. Again, it comes back to the issue of us needing more staff to do that because doing schemes like that takes more staff input. It is the right thing to do, however, and that will be factored into our request for new staff.

On staffing in general in local authorities, we do need more. I agree completely about core functions. In the CCMA, we see the delivery of social and affordable housing as our core function, and we want to do that. We have been doing it at scale up to now. We need to ramp up and do more of that and it is about getting in the resources to do it. We have a mixture of architects, engineers and quantity surveyors in our housing team. Most local authorities do, so we have all the skill sets in-house. We do all our design work in-house, and then we use design-and-build or development under licence to do that. What we are really good at is designing houses. When we design houses, our architects know the locals and the councillors in the area, they know what to look out for when they are designing things, and what will get through the Part 8 and public consultation processes. We absolutely want to be resourced to do that and to do more of it. We want to do more of the things the Deputy has said, such as smaller infill developments that take more resources. We want to do more than that but we need the resources to do it and we will factor that into the work we are doing with the Department regarding our ask for more resources and staff and for getting the architects, engineers and quantity surveyors to do that.