We now move to Questions on Promised Legislation. Some 20 Members are offering. We will be able to get to them all if Members keep their contributions brief.

In the housing crisis vein, and accepting that it is a crisis, I put to the Taoiseach earlier the regulatory framework governing the submission by local authorities of housing schemes to the Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment and the inexplicable delays in sanctioning such projects. If it is an emergency and a crisis, surely that framework should be changed. The idea that a council that wants to build ten houses at a cost of anything more than €2 million has to submit those plans to the Department, go through a four-stage process and a 59 week timetable is ridiculous, if we accept it is a crisis. Housing schemes submitted as far back as last February have not been sanctioned. That is why I ask the question: do people not get it? This is a real crisis.

Thank you, Deputy.

Schemes are ready to go.

Let us get the answer now.

What is going on is unacceptable, and I do not believe it can be defended.

I thank the Deputy for the question. The first thing to acknowledge is that when we are talking about building homes that will stand for 60 or 70 years to house many generations of families, we have to get it right. In the past, certain planning schemes did not get it right. What we did in the Department was work with the chief executives of the local authorities to streamline what was an eight or nine-stage process down to the current four-stage process, which is 59 weeks and is comparable to the private sector when we are talking about large-scale development of housing on large sites and the different work that needs to be done as part of that timeline.

One of the areas I looked to try to cut down the time on was procurement. We cannot step around European Union procurement law. There is a one-stage process local authorities can go through. It is a much quicker process. Approximately 100 projects that have come to the Department through the four-stage process could have gone through the one-stage process but the local authorities did not submit them under the one-stage process.

Why?

That is why-----

The Minister should ask himself the question why.

He knows the answer to that question.

Can we let the Minister answer?

-----I have been bringing the chief executives of local authorities-----

The Minister does not have to do that.

They would not have got the money to do it.

-----into housing summits to talk through the problems we have and to make sure they try to bring about housing provision in the fastest way possible. It is also the reason I am in discussions with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform to see what we can do about public spending controls to make the one-stage process work better for those local authorities that would use it.

Thank you, Minister.

Currently, there are more than 100 projects that should have gone through the one-stage process that did not, and the city managers did not put them through.

Who is in charge?

The local authorities provide local authority housing.

Minister-----

The Minister knows why they did not.

We provide the policy and the money.

We have raised this in the budget talks. This is a simple thing the Minister could do.

Deputy Martin, the time is up.

I told the Deputy we were addressing it.

He brings the chief executives up every couple of weeks.

I call Deputy McDonald.

What are the local authorities there for?

Some time ago-----

To second-guess the-----

Deputy, please.