Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein)
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32. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government if he will release funding to employ more staff in the housing section of Laois and Kildare County Councils and release extra funding to expand their housing construction programmes. [16819/17]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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My Department works closely with Laois County Council and Kildare County Council in relation to their overall staffing requirements. However, under section 159 of the Local Government Act 2001, it is the Chief Executive of the Council who is responsible for staffing and organisational arrangements necessary for carrying out the functions of the local authority. Funding provided from my Department towards capital construction projects can be used to assist in meeting the cost of local authority administration and technical work associated with those projects.

Details of the social housing construction programmes of Laois and Kildare County Councils are included in the list of projects nationwide that I published as part of the Rebuilding Ireland reporting at end-Quarter 4 2016 and which can be accessed at the following link:  . This shows 10 social housing construction projects in Co Laois at that point and 13 in Co Kildare, which are at various stages of advancement from planning and design, to those that are already on site. This list is being added to on an ongoing basis and I have assured Laois and Kildare County Councils, and all other local authorities, that funding is in place to support these important construction programmes.

Since 1 January 2015, my Department has received 7 staff sanction requests from Laois County Council and 56 staff sanction requests from Kildare County Council in relation to Housing, with all 63 posts approved. The sanctioned posts include replacement, temporary and additional staff. There are no outstanding Housing related sanction requests from these local authorities with my Department. The detail of the sanction requests received is set out in the following table.