Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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515. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if he will provide details of the public sector benchmarking exercise used in the first bundle of the social housing public private partnerships. [63754/22]

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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516. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if he will provide an update on bundle 2 and bundle 3 of the social housing PPP programme. [63755/22]

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 515 and 516 together.

The Social Housing Public Private Partnership (PPP) Programme represents an additional strand of delivery to increase the supply of social housing. The current programme has to date delivered 1,000 new homes with a further 2,700 units in the pipeline.

In terms of progress to date, in 2021 construction was completed on Bundles 1 and 2. Bundle 1 delivered 534 houses and apartments across six sites in Dublin, Kildare, Louth and Wicklow in 2020 and 2021 while Bundle 2 delivered 465 homes in 2021 across eight sites in Cork, Clare, Galway, Kildare, Roscommon and Waterford. Bundle 3 will deliver 486 new social houses and apartments across six sites in Dublin, Kildare, Sligo and Wicklow and the tender process commenced in Q4 2022.

In accordance with the commitment under Housing for All, my Department will increase the use of PPPs to deliver social housing. In June 2022, Bundles 4 and 5 of the new programme were launched, which will deliver in the region of 1,600 new homes while more recently, Bundle 6 was announced and is expected to provide almost 600 new homes. Significant progress is being made under the programme and my Department is actively working with relevant stakeholders including the National Development Finance Agency, the Housing Delivery Co-ordination Office, and relevant local authorities to progress further bundles of projects.

The Public Sector Benchmark (PSB) is an essential part of any PPP project. It contains commercially sensitive information in relation to the methodology used for costing public sector projects and for the pricing of risks by public sector bodies. In accordance with guidelines from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, (Guidelines for the use of Public Private Partnerships), current policy is that the final PSB, or any elements thereof, is not made public during the tendering process on the basis that revealing the amount that the State may pay for a service may give tenderers an opportunity to increase their asking price above what they might otherwise seek. This is also relevant where it is intended to procure further similar projects in the near future (e.g. subsequent project bundles as part of an ongoing PPP programme).

However, in accordance with the Guidelines, following the completion of the construction phase, once an appropriate period of time has elapsed and the commercial sensitivity of the information on the project is no longer an issue (having regard also to any other similar PPP projects which may be in pre-procurement), the PSB should be made public. On this basis, while Bundles 1 and 2 of the programme are completed, the procurement process for Bundle 3 is in progress and there is a significant pipeline of projects approved, so it is not appropriate to publish the PSB at this time. However, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform has agreed, in the interest of transparency and timing, that the PSB may be published when the tender process for Bundle 3 has been finalised and the contract is awarded.