Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are a lot of site works required for the O'Devaney Gardens project so I would not simply divide the money by the number of houses we are building and make deductions from that. It is a much broader project that will probably involve the expenditure of a couple of hundred million euro. There will be some 600 multi-use and mixed-development units, including mixed-tenure units, involving both public and private money.

On the financing of projects, one of the reasons we are changing the planning decision making process for large applications is to get much more certainty into the decision making process, which has a direct impact on the ability to get finance. No bank in Ireland will put any financing into a project unless planning permission has been granted. We are also putting a fund of approximately €200 million together through the Irish Strategic Investment Fund to help developers finance infrastructure on site. Further, the State will probably announce next week where we will spend €200 million of public money on infrastructure to connect sites in order to get them moving. We are doing a lot on the financing side. If there are other innovative things we should be examining in terms of issuing bonds, I am happy to receive the detail on them.

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