Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)
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Question 87: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government if his attention has been drawn to the serious concern expressed by the Institute of Engineers of Ireland regarding the failure to meet targets set out in the national development plan, particularly in regard to housing and waste management; the steps he proposes to take to deal with these delays; if he will act on the institute's recommendation for the creation of a national waste management agency; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3880/05]

Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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I am satisfied, having regard in particular to the mid-term review of the national development plan overseen by the Economic and Social Research Institute, in co-operation with a number of consultancy firms, that progress on the various NDP programmes and measures falling within the remit of my Department has been generally satisfactory. I am determined that we will continue to make progress on achieving our targets for the remainder of the programme and I am committed to maintaining a high level of activity around those measures which are the responsibility of my Department.

In including housing as a major area of activity under the national development plan, the Government demonstrated its commitment to increasing support for social and affordable housing programmes. Since the plan's inception in 2000 the needs of almost 60,000 households have been met under the range of social and affordable housing programmes. Between 2000 and the end of 2004, provisional outturn figures show investment under the housing aspect of the NDP is some 10% ahead of forecast.

While output levels for social housing by the local authority and voluntary sector have been less than envisaged in the NDP targets, record levels of completions have been achieved over the period of the plan. The shortfall in achieving output targets can for the main part be attributed to higher than anticipated construction costs. This factor has been acknowledged in external evaluations of the programmes, which also indicated that the expenditure on social housing was making positive impacts in terms of tackling poverty and social exclusion.

The Government's decision to introduce multi-annual capital investment programmes provides an important opportunity to ensure a structured basis for the planning and delivery of all social and affordable housing programmes. Through five year action plans for social and affordable housing developed by local authorities, resources will be used to best effect. The plans will be used to maximise output, value for money and ensure that priority is given to those most in need. Overall, the priority is to ensure that housing is delivered in a manner, which breaks cycles of dependency and disadvantage.

With regard to waste management, the last six months of 2004 have seen significant progress both on local authority recycling and recovery and disposal infrastructure. In terms of grant assistance, my Department has made some €50 million available to date for over 90 projects. I do not consider it opportune at this time to create a national waste management agency to promote waste infrastructure, as recommended in the report; a more urgent issue at present may be to advance arrangements for the improved economic regulation of waste infrastructure.

As regards the regionalisation of waste management planning, the rationale is to ensure local authorities assume greater responsibility for dealing with waste in their functional areas, including working in collaboration with neighbouring authorities and giving consideration to the role of the private sector. My Department has asked local authorities to ensure there is effective engagement with the private waste industry in the context of review of the waste management plans.

The report recommends making the waste infrastructure capital grants scheme available to the private sector. When the capital grants scheme was launched it was intended that it be made available to both public and private sector applicants. The latter, however, was conditional on obtaining the necessary state aid approved from the European Commission. As it transpired, the state aid given was of a limited nature. In the interim, however, the industry's scale increased significantly over a short period of time, a marked process of consolidation became evident and some of the projects for which grant applications had been submitted proceeded in any case.

It became clear, therefore, that a grant scheme for private companies would be more likely to distort competition in the sector or to impact on enhancing acquisition values in the context of industry consolidation than to have a significant effect on the provision of recycling and recovery infrastructure. On foot of this my predecessor decided that it would be more effective to redeploy the funding in question to other related initiatives and in particular towards greater enforcement of waste legislation. The latter measure had been strongly advocated by the industry, to address the problem of unfair competition from contractors operating outside the law.

In conclusion, I am satisfied good progress is being made on the measures under the national development plan which come within the remit of my Department. I accept, however, we must constantly renew our efforts to maximise the opportunities for economic and social progress under the plan.