Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We are getting back to building social housing. Next year we will build more homes for social housing than were built in any of the past 20 years, including any of the boom years. That is very important. We can do that because of the work that we did in the initial stages of Rebuilding Ireland and it is because of the reforms that we continue to make to the approval process that we can do that more quickly.

If Deputy O'Brien were to put himself in my shoes and look at a recent project such as the children's hospital, which his party and others criticised in terms of cost overruns, he would not then, on reflection, want to lose even more oversight of cost controls in his Department by doing something that would seem to be both risky in terms of capital delivery but also might even lead to further delays if projects came forward that he could not stand over in terms of value for money. For example, one local authority could come forward with plans to build apartments at a unit cost of at least €500,000 if not €600,000. We would only see more of that if we increased the thresholds. Again, the four-stage process has been streamlined down to 59 weeks and it is down to 44 weeks in some local authorities. The person who has driven that in Wicklow is the chair of the housing committee in the CCMA. We are now putting the housing delivery office into the CCMA so we are going to see those improvements in other local authorities. I will see if I can provide the documents to the Oireachtas joint committee this afternoon.

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