Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his question. Budget 2022 provided record levels of investment to support housing programmes, levels which we have not seen before, including for the delivery of increased levels of social and affordable homes. Exchequer funding of €4 billion was made available, comprising €2.6 billion in capital and €1.4 billion in current funding. Additional capital funding was available through the Housing Finance Agency and the Land Development Agency.

As I have already stated publicly, my Department put arrangements in place to carry over the full 10% capital allocation from 2022 to 2023. This amounted to €340 million and the detail of the allocation of that funding was published in the 2023 Revised Estimates Volume, REV. Section 91 of the Finance Act 2004 provides for the carry over of up to 10% of the REV allocation, which is the capital, from one year to the next. The capital carry over is a practice which is used across Departments to ensure the continuity of funding for capital projects.

As Deputy O'Callaghan is no doubt aware, the impact of the war in Ukraine has genuinely presented significant challenges as we faced high levels of construction inflation, significant increases in energy costs and issues with the supply chains. These are just facts and, in particular, there was an issue around supply chains for building material. These issues caused delays in some large social housing projects as contractors faced concerns that the costs of delivering the projects exceeded prices agreed under public works contracts.

To address some of these challenges, in May 2022 the Government responded with the introduction of the inflation and supply chain delay co-operation framework.

That framework allowed for the payment of up to 70% of the increased costs to contractors by local authorities, with detailed guidance provided to support its implementation. Delivery recovered very strongly in the second half of the year, as I said it would and as was anticipated. However, the delays encountered meant some projects did not progress as expected during 2022. This in turn reduced somewhat the levels of capital claims received by the Department from local authorities.

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