Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

I particularly welcome the overall target in the housing plan of 12,000 social units per annum, building on the progress made on the Housing for All plan, which, it must be acknowledged, made significant progress in the area of social housing. There are new initiatives in this plan to help deliver social housing such as the performance fund for local authorities, which is critical. Many local authorities do a great job but others not so. It is important that recognition is given to those that do a good job. Having ring-fenced teams is also critically important. The revision of the land acquisition fund is very significant because that is a particular issue across the country in terms of local authorities having a land bank available to them for the development of social housing. Of course, the standardisation of design is critically important to make the delivery of social housing more efficient.

I will be touching modern methods of construction in a further question, but it is welcome to see that also included in the delivery of social housing because we have to embrace that technology.

See this speech in context