In this House two weeks ago the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, asked Deputies to give him solutions to the housing problem. I asked him to allow local authorities build on their landbanks. I also asked him if he would pay them the outstanding moneys in respect of the loans they had taken out on the landbanks. In my county Louth County Council is paying over €1 million a year in interest in paying off its loans. Yesterday the chief executive of the council said she would cut back the budget in order to balance the books. That means that local grants will not be paid.

The Minister asked for solutions and we are giving them to him. There are vacant houses in Dundalk and the surrounding areas in County Louth that are boarded up because they have no money to service them for re-letting. Two weeks ago, we gave the Minister the solution and I have heard nothing back. Will he please give me an update on the situation?

Local authorities are building houses on their own land. That is happening. The local authority in Louth is purchasing houses compulsorily and it does have money to repair houses and have them re-let. On debt on land, a land aggregation scheme was done after the crash. Working with the Housing Agency, we took on a number of landbanks and resolved the debt issues that existed for those local authorities. It is because of debt issues like those that we are being more careful and prudent in terms of how we are spending our money this time around in building public housing on public land. We are in the process of considering the potential for a further land aggregation scheme in the future where it may be necessary. The land has to be in locations where it makes sense to build houses.