Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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9. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government if he will provide major additional funding for the four Dublin and other large local authorities to enable their housing, construction and planning departments to restore the levels of planning and construction expertise and staffing that local government had up to the early 1990s to engage in direct planning and building of social and affordable housing; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35229/16]

Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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64. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government if he has received any requests from the four Dublin and other large local authorities for extra funding to enable them to employ additional skilled housing construction and planning staff to expedite local authority social housing programmes; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35228/16]

Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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At the outset, I do not agree with Deputy Wallace in respect of timber-frame accommodation. Certainly, apartments which were built with timber frame have caused problems. It is something that has to be kept under strict review.

On the question, I mentioned to the Minister's colleague, the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Deputy Zappone, that 2,500 of our children will be in emergency homeless accommodation on Christmas Day. That is happening on the Minister, Deputy Coveney's, watch. The numbers of homeless families are growing. We have 45,000 citizens on housing lists in the Dublin local authorities. As a key element of this, the Minister told a colleague recently that he had sanctioned 500 additional posts in construction and planning roles in the major local authorities and I wondered whether he is prepared to take any further action on that.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 9 and 64 together.

The elected members of a local authority have direct responsibility in law for all reserved functions of an authority, which includes adopting the annual budget, and are democratically accountable for all expenditure by the authority. As such, it is a matter for each local authority to determine its own spending priorities in the context of the annual budgetary process having regard to both locally identified needs and available resources.

In terms of funding, the social housing element of Rebuilding Ireland - Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness proposes a significantly increased level of ambition, aiming for the delivery of 47,000 social housing units through build, refurbishment, acquisitions and leasing, over the period 2016 to 2021, supported by Exchequer investment of some €5.35 billion. A further €200 million is being provided through the local infrastructure housing activation fund.

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 pre-application consultation at local authority level.

Since the publication of Rebuilding Ireland, the focus has been very much on driving implementation and accelerating housing delivery. To this end, I have visited a number of local authorities and have met all local authority chief executives. I have assured them that they will have the necessary support and resources to deliver on the plan.

With regard to 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 551 staffing requests, of which 541 have been approved, with the remaining ten pending, awaiting further information. These posts are varied and relate to planners, technicians, surveyors, engineers, project managers, housing welfare officers, building inspectors, clerks of works and administrative staff. In response to issues raised regarding staff costs, arrangements have been put 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 which also, of course, have a role to play in meeting the additional costs themselves.

Under the aegis of the Cabinet committee on housing, chaired by the Taoiseach, the Government will be keeping the implementation of the Rebuilding Ireland plan under careful review with published quarterly reports on implementation and progress.

We are involved - to answer Deputy Broughan's question directly - in an ongoing conversation with chief executives. If they need more staff to deliver on the kind of ambition that we have, as the Deputy can see, we generally respond to that. If they need more, as long as they can justify the case, we will certainly try and look at it favourably.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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The time remaining is limited. I call Deputy Broughan and I will then call Deputy Ó Broin.

Tommy Broughan (Dublin Bay North, Independent)
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Is the reality that it is because of the policies of successive Governments the Minister's party and, in particular, Fianna Fáil, have led since the late 1980s that the professional memory of excellence in all aspects of housing construction and planning has been lost by local authorities? Does the Minister not have a clear responsibility to ensure that such professional excellence is brought back? Should he be asking the authorities to take up a much stronger role?

If we want to increase housing supply, we must get the local authorities involved. It must be remembered that in the city in which the Minister is sitting and in his own city, some of the best estates - estates which have developed well over the decades - were built by local authorities. Like many in this Chamber, I grew up in a county council house. The Minister and his predecessors have allowed that resource to be lost. The results, of course, are the dismal figures - all zero - for housing production on the part of the four Dublin local authorities, year in and year out. Only the other day I looked at the Dublin City Council direct construction programme to 2020. It is a dismal programme of approximately 800 units for the entire city and is part of the Minister's overall programme. In my constituency, it amounts to the building of a few dozen units each year. We have tens of thousands of people desperately seeking accommodation.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I have two brief questions. The Minister has said a number of times that funding is not an issue and that if local authorities bring forward more ambitious programmes than the ones they are currently pursuing, he will consider them. South Dublin County Council has budgeted to construct 600 new-build units. If it approaches the Minister and states that it wants to build twice that number, is he seriously saying that he will consider the proposal?

What is really killing local authorities is the length of time the approval process takes. For example, in Clondalkin this week we are starting to see the building of local authority houses the planning permission for which we, as councillors, approved at the start of 2014. Can the Minister give us an update on his commitment to shorten that four-stage approval process? We can have all the funding we want but if it takes 18 months to get bricks on the ground, it will cause problems for all of us.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I assure Deputy Ó Broin it will no longer take 18 months to get approval. There was an eight-stage approval process. It is now down to four stages. There is a real effort to streamline now.

We have given a commitment to chief executives that once they get projects across the line in terms of the Part 8 process and once they make applications in respect of those projects to the Department, we will ensure a quick turnaround in respect of them. We will send project teams to local authority offices to tease through the issues and get through the stages in days rather than weeks. That is what we are trying to do.

We must ensure that there is integrity in the decision-making process. We are spending millions of euro in public money and the important point is that we can account for all of it. We can account for the value that is being derived from those projects. We ensure that mistakes have not been made and that we are not paying too much for rapid-build projects or, for that matter, anything else.

We must have a robust process but the Department and I - people are working very hard on this - are committed to ensuring that we move through those stages far faster than has been the case previously and that we have face-to-face meetings to get that done, rather than having an e-mail or letter engagement which often gives rise to delays for all sorts of reasons. We will move on that.

With regard to south Dublin, we have told chief executives to be ambitious. We have signed off on many new projects for next year. If there are more, we will consider trying to accommodate them as long as the ambition is consistent with the policy direction around mixed-tenure developments and building good, balanced communities.