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

On staffing and resources, local authorities have never had more staff than they have now. They have never had more resources than they have now. Where we receive submissions from local authorities, like in this instance from Carlow County Council, if they put a case forward to us and require additional sanction, we look at those requests favourably, though they obviously have to stack up. Following the Deputy's intervention today, I will await the receipt of that submission from Carlow County Council and we will look at it and deal with it as efficiently and expeditiously as possible.

The Deputy mentioned the area of homelessness in her response, and rightly so. While we are building more homes, and we are, delivering more social homes and have seen significant reductions in social housing waiting lists, there are still people out there who do not have a home at all.

They are, and will remain, the Government's number one priority. More people exited homelessness into permanent social homes than ever before in the past three quarters. That is welcome but we will never take our eye off the ball on that. That is why the increased supply is important. It is starting to make a real difference. We have to continue to work on that with local authorities, such as Carlow County Council.

On modern methods of construction, MMC, I had the pleasure of visiting the plant in Carlow with the Deputy. It is impressive to see life being breathed back into the old Braun factory in the centre of the town with hundreds of jobs created and high quality off-site homes being produced through MMC. We are doing more and more of that throughout the country. We have targeted local authorities and 1,500 homes are to be delivered through MMC on sites where we have removed the debt from local authorities. We are encouraging them. It makes sense from a climate perspective, an efficiency perspective and a time perspective. The new factory in Carlow is incredibly impressive and I see MMC as a main way of increasing efficient supply.

See this speech in context