Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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11. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government the additional funding and staffing allocations his Department is making to local authorities and planning authorities to increase social housing output and quality planning outputs in the context of the new targets under the action plan for housing; his views on whether housing and planning units in local authorities are adequately resourced and staffed. [28799/16]

Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The last Government failed drastically to address the housing situation. It made huge commitments in terms of enabling local authorities to build houses but, as the Minister has just said, they only built 75 last year. What resources is the Minister now making available to local authorities to enable them to build 1,200 units this year, let alone the increased numbers for subsequent years referred to by the Minister? How can I, my constituents and Members of this House be confident that progress will be made, considering the failures in recent years?

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Since the publication of Rebuilding Ireland: Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness, the focus has been very much on implementation and driving an acceleration in housing delivery. To this end, I have visited a number of local authorities and have met all the chief executives. I have assured them that they will have the necessary support and resources to deliver on Rebuilding Ireland.

In terms of staffing associated with the delivery of housing, local authorities have been rebuilding their resource base for some time now. Since January 2015, my Department has received 518 staffing requests, of which 502 have been approved, with the remaining 16 pending awaiting further information. These posts are varied and include planners, technicians, surveyors, engineers, project managers, housing welfare officers, building inspectors, clerks of works and administrative staff. Arrangements are in place under which certain staffing costs associated with the roll-out of the social housing capital programme can be recouped as part of project costs, providing an important support for local authorities.

In terms of funding, the social housing element of Rebuilding Ireland proposes a significantly increased level of ambition, aiming for the delivery of 47,000 social housing units through new builds, refurbishment, acquisitions and leasing over the 2016 to 2021 period, supported by Exchequer investment of some €5.35 billion. A further €200 million is being provided for the local infrastructure housing activation fund which, as the Deputy knows, is being competed for at the moment.

In addition, Rebuilding Ireland will deliver innovations to improve, support and accelerate delivery at local authority level. These include building on streamlining and efficiencies already introduced for the social housing approval process, streamlining the Part 8 planning process for local authority development and time limited changes to the planning process for housing more generally, with large scale projects of 100 units or more being submitted directly to An Bord Pleanála for decision following a statutory pre-planning consultation period at local authority level.

Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Minister for his reply. I have a number of supplementary questions and would like specific answers, if at all possible.

Have the local authorities specifically requested extra staff as part of the resources needed to meet the demands being placed upon them? Is there a staff resourcing issue that needs to be addressed? Have the local authorities identified it and made specific requests of the Department? When will the Department respond and can the local authorities be assured that their requests will be met?

The Minister referred to the housing activation fund of €200 million, for which the local authorities must compete, to provide necessary infrastructure. I ask him to confirm that it amounts to €50 million over four years. Is there conditionality associated with that fund? Many developers and local authorities have told me that the conditions associated with the fund render it unviable into the future. While the announcement of €200 million sounds good, when one drills down, one finds that it is over a four year period. The conditionality means that it may not even be spent. It is like the urban renewal scheme in that regard. Councillors have told me that it could be up to 18 months before the funding that is needed today becomes available. It is good from the perspective of the Minister and the Department because they may not have to spend what they say they are spending.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy asked about extra staff. I have spoken to many CEOs and some of them have said that they need to bump up their staffing levels. Others had already asked my predecessor for additional staffing and had received approval. More than 500 approvals for extra staffing have been granted, mostly in the housing and housing-related areas. I have made it very clear to the chief executives of local authorities that if they have a staffing shortage that is causing a significant problem in terms of housing delivery, I need to know about it. I will then try to solve it. The local authorities can talk to the housing delivery unit in my Department if there are problems or they can come to me directly.

The infrastructure fund comprises €150 million from the State and €50 million from the local authorities, over three rather than four years. If it is front-loaded, so be it. The Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is open to that, potentially. That said, some infrastructure projects will undoubtedly take time to deliver. When one is talking about bridges, extra lanes in roads and so forth, permissions are required and processes must be gone through. However, work on building sites can start once developers know that the infrastructure is on the way, whether by next year or the year after. That is the whole purpose here, to try to get sites moving.

Jim Daly (Cork South West, Fine Gael)
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I must ask the Minister and Deputies to keep to the clock. I want to be fair to everyone and to make sure all Deputies get a chance to put their questions. No one question takes precedence over another so I ask all speakers to adhere to the clock.

Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I ask the Minister to consider strongly reverting to the old serviced land scheme that used to be in place under which councils could recoup funding spent on providing infrastructure through local levies. I also ask the Minister to front-load much of the available funding because, in the long run, it is cost-neutral and is badly needed at this time.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Councils can, of course, add levies to development charges to get certain things done. That has been one of the big problems to date. Many developers have said to me, and I am sure to Deputy Cowen, that they simply could not make the numbers add up if they had to fund a bridge, a road or a new water connection, for example, to a site that may or may not be serviced. The whole point of the State intervening here is to try to pick up some of that tab in order to make a business case for a site to be opened and for houses to be built. That is the whole point of it but the option is still there for local authorities to recoup some of the cost of providing infrastructure through a levy system. There are many examples of where that will happen.