Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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4. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government to outline the way in which his Department plans to address approval lags for cost rental equity loan, CREL, funding; the reason capital advance leasing facility, CALF, and CREL funding is being approved at different times; the number of units which have been delayed, in tabular form; and his plans to address these delays. [53906/25]

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I thank the Deputy for his question.

I confirm that there are no approval lags for CREL funding. There is an approval process for funding applications to ensure compliance with the scheme conditions and value for money for the Exchequer. This is, as it should be, a requirement under public financial procedures. A necessary process should not be misrepresented as a delay.

Since July last year, the average time taken from the date the final report was submitted to the Department to the date of approval is 48 working days. In this regard, my Department has already approved more than 41 affordable housing body, AHB, projects this year, which will deliver more than 3,000 units up to 2029, while more than €400 million in CREL funding has been provided to AHBs to date in 2025. This ongoing and continued resourcing underpins the Government's commitment to the sector and I am satisfied that the approval process and support for AHBs under CREL is robust.

While my Department makes every effort to process CREL and CALF applications as quickly as possible, the size, scale, complexity and specifications of each application is significant and the assessment time required to ensure projects are viable and represent value for money can vary. In addition, where an application is for funding under both CREL and CALF, it is often the case that the applications for the two schemes are not submitted by AHBs at the same time. In such instances, clarification is sought from the relevant AHB to establish whether a project can proceed independently. Where individual progress is impossible, turnaround times can be affected. My Department encourages AHBs and local authorities to seek funding for such projects simultaneously and will take further steps, as required, to ensure this happens going forward.

Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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We need to be honest here about what is going on. Someone is spinning something or telling porkies. It was reported on RTÉ's "Prime Time" last May that there were delays. AHBs said there were delays. It cannot be easy for approved housing bodies to be publicly critical of the Department of housing and the delays in because they rely on the Department for their funding. They said it very clearly in the public domain - as well as to me and others - that there is huge uncertainty in relation to the approval of these cost rental affordable projects and the social housing associated with it. The Minister and the Department might be putting it across that these are questions relating to the different points at which projects are approved, but we need to get straighter.

How many projects have been turned down for CREL and CALF?

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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I reject the premise that there have been delays. For example, 54 CREL projects have been approved since the beginning of July last year and the average number of working days was 48 for this period. The processing times for individual applications can vary for the reasons I have outlined. That said, the trend is that projects are taking less and less time to assess. For example, projects submitted from July to December 2024 took 93 working days on average, whereas projects submitted from January to July 2025 - in my time - took 15 days on average. However, it is important to note that the standard deviation is high. Each project is assessed on an individual basis so the time it takes to assess one project does not in any indicate the time taken for another project. The longest time an application was on hand with the Department before receiving approval was 200 working days, while the shortest was a single working day. That can come down to a number of different reasons. We process these as quickly as possible but it can come down to the nature of the application. We have to do value for money, look at the specifications and, at times, seek further information in relation to various applications.

Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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We are in agreement that we want to see as many cost rental and social homes as possible built in as quick a time as possible. I do not understand why it is coming out that there are these delays. The Minister says there are no delays. I am not satisfied that is the case because AHBs are saying there are issues of delays. The Minister also said at the housing committee that there is a finite amount of funding - which of course there is - to approve these projects. However, that has to mean that there are projects going forward that are coming to the Department's desk and it is having to decide that it will not fund them. I would like to know, and we should know, how many proposals are coming forward from AHBs for social housing that the Department is deciding not to progress because the funding is not there.

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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We are not in that situation at the moment. As I said, we are processing these ever more quickly. As I said, it took 15 days, on average, in the first six months of this year to process these applications. I encourage applications. There is an issue there, as the Deputy rightly pointed out, in terms of CALF and CREL not being aligned. It is something that the Department with AHBs and local authorities have to work on to see how we can get them better aligned. I admit that it is a frustration for me when I sign off on a cost-rental and then I see we have to wait to get the CALF because it is on a different track. That is because the applications are coming in differently. It is something that I, with the Department, AHBs and local authorities, can get an awful lot better. I am going to work on doing that.