Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister's predecessor had a terrible habit of refusing to answer very reasonable questions from the Opposition during Priority Questions. I had hoped that the Minister would not repeat that pattern. Unfortunately, he has done so just now. He has failed to address the question. There was not a perfectly normal situation at the end of last year. We know that because the local authorities, approved housing bodies and building contractors and developers have told us that. There was a huge delay in anything up to 5,000 units of social affordable housing. That was caused in part by a significant overspend in the Department because there were challenges around the operation of the cost rental equity loan as well as the social housing investment fund.

The Minister sought and secured approval for 3,000 social and affordable homes at Cabinet. Of those, how many notifications have been passed on to local authorities and approved housing bodies so that they can get working on them? Of the remainder, how many are still awaiting approval? These are reasonable questions. I got a poor reply from the Minister to a parliamentary question over a week ago when he refused to provide me with the information. We should not have these kinds of rows, so please will the Minister address the question I have asked?

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