Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is going to have to enlighten us all because he is in charge of this. Would it take, in the context of the housing emergency, eight weeks to get a proposal ready on the part of a county council? In terms of the Department, which has a lot more staff and expertise, would that take about six weeks? Could the Minister of State tell us if it is his view that his Department and the county council together can get this public procurement process done and dusted, and get builders etc. on site within approximately - let us double the time - 20 weeks?

As Minister of State, his job is to untangle the bureaucracy. We have county councils with flow charts. Accompanied by the flow charts, on the Minister of State's own departmental website, they look like a surrealistic painting. The reason I say "surreal" is because the length of time it appears to be taking for public procurement, arising from the procedures of his Department's, which is well resourced, and the county councils, to which the senior Minister has given a kicking recently, which the Minister of State has said was deserved. Can the Minister of State give us a timeline on how long the average public procurement process will last? Currently, the Minister of State is making people who are walking by all of the derelict sites feel utterly hopeless.

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