Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Dillon's question was on Uisce Éireann and he particularly raised the slow timeline for the Newport sewerage scheme. That is something I will make personal inquiries about. I have met Uisce Éireann about its work programme and it has been clear with me that it is not possible for it to progress all projects at any one time. Even with additional finance there are limitations around skills and supply chains. There has to be a pipeline and the pipeline is not as fast as any of us would wish it to be.

On rural water schemes for villages, I am keen to make progress on this in order that we can have water schemes in more villages and small settlements. In that way, the small villages can have a natural increase and people can build houses in them. The Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, tells me that a decision on that will be made in the coming weeks, and certainly no later than the end of the year.

Going back to the question the Deputy asked in the last segment, on the chief pharmacy officer, I will have to double check with the Minister, Deputy Stephen Donnelly, about that. The last time I checked the thinking was not to have an individual chief officer for all professions, including pharmacy, speech and language therapy and physiotherapy. I could go on and describe more but the thinking was to have a single one for all of the allied professions. That was the thinking on that but that may have changed. We have a Government-funded National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics, headed by Professor Barry, which does a lot of the work a chief pharmacy officer might do in a different jurisdiction.

Deputy Boyd Barrett talked about Vienna and mentioned the fact that 60% of all new developments in Vienna are reserved for social and public housing. It would be interesting to know where we are with that in the Dublin City Council area, because a huge amount of the new housing that is being built in the Dublin City Council area is social, cost rental or affordable. It might be the case that even without a rule it is at 60% already. Not a huge number of private homes for purchase are being built in the Dublin City Council area but it would be worth checking that out. If you look at the 30,000 new homes that were built last year, the proportion of those that were private homes for sale on the normal market was quite small. It could have been as few as one third, and most of those were located around our cities and suburban areas. I would like to see more homes being built for private purchase by people in all parts of the country, including Dublin city.

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