Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is not disingenuous. Deputy Casey referred to projects of ten units and 20 units. There is a single-stage process available for those projects. I have encouraged local authorities to use it. Many choose not to use it. I have asked our Department and the local authorities to consider the way that the same method is being used to deliver schools under the devolved grant scheme. That worked quite well and everybody got on board with it eventually. It was started by Noel Dempsey, and I totally accept that. People should not be afraid of the risk associated with the single stage process. All of us working for the delivery of housing know that there is a need to change the processes. That is what we are trying to do. That is why the interaction of our staff and the staff of the local authorities has increased dramatically and why on-site meetings are happening much more often. The availability is there. We have to eliminate the delays and the blame game associated with them. That should not be there any more, because there is no excuse for delay. In defence of both sides, there were not sufficient staff two or three years ago to deal with this. An extra 500 staff have been sanctioned to work on housing projects in the past year and that will help to make it faster as well.

On Deputy Wallace's question, we have no problem with an analysis of our 10,000 pipeline projects. I will get that done. They are available online and can be analysed. We are not saying that they are all under construction. They are all at different stages of the pipeline.

See this speech in context