Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Perfect. I will go back to an issue Deputy McGrath raised. Last week, when local authority re-lets were being discussed there was some unfortunate language in the Chamber. We heard about dependency culture among local authorities and local authorities looking for handouts. The NOAC report referenced by Mr. Taaffe is clear. It is an average turnaround time of 33 weeks and there is an average cost of €28,000. When you look at NOAC's breakdown, very few local authorities go significantly above that. There are a few, but there are no big outliers. To what extent is the average turnaround time complicated by local authorities in certain cases having to go to the Department to seek top-up funding for refurbs? Are there any issues with delays in getting sanction for those? I have spoken to some local authority housing managers and staff who cite those issues as two of the challenges. Deputy McGrath is right that there is also a variance across local authorities and that has to be understood, but 33 weeks on average is still quite long and the funding requirements are significant. Will the witnesses respond to those, and do they think local authorities have a dependency culture and are coming cap in hand looking for handouts? Or do they think that when they request money for casual re-lets that it is a reasonable request from the Department?