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

I think my colleague on my right prefers a mocha frappuccino, although they are not very common down in my area. I prefer the mocha to be straightforward. To be clear, we have sat down with them. I would point out that when we took up the brief of housing, as Fine Gael Ministers, one of the first issues was to make sure the money that credit unions have was made available, and while they would not have €13 billion or €14 billion to invest in housing, they certainly have an amount of money. Our Departments did come together and facilitated a lot of meetings and processes.

We do not control the Central Bank. The Central Bank is not run by any Fine Gael Minister. The Central Bank has completed its work. The process is complete in terms of the work that can be done by the Departments of Finance and Housing, Planning and Local Government and by the Central Bank. It is up to the entities themselves to develop Special Purpose Vehicles, SPVs, and to work with the Approved Housing Bodies, AHBs, on that. Some have been successful and are through the process and money is available to be spent today. I am trying to be very clear about that. That part is complete. The AHBs have to decide who to borrow money from and how much they will pay for that money. That is their decision. We cannot make them do it. We have encouraged them to bring forward projects. There is a pipeline of projects across many sites. Currently, there are over 1,000 sites and development projects coming forward and a large percentage of them are through AHBs. There are options there in terms of this investment happening. The Fine Gael Ministers have sat down and done their work on this and that work is complete.

See this speech in context