There was much discussion in the context of the local elections about restoring power to local authorities. The housing crisis is continuing, and giving more discretion to local authorities in how they manage their projects would assist in solving that crisis. A commitment was given last year that that discretion would be increased and the limit would be increased from €2 million to €6 million. That limit can be increased with full transparency and oversight if there is a willingness to give local authorities that power. I see the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, gearing up to respond. Does he have any additional response to that which he gave the housing committee yesterday?

I thank the Deputy for his question. What I told his colleague at yesterday's committee meeting was that a commitment was made last year to review the public spending code, in order to see if we could increase the threshold from €2 million to €6 million. Doing that would require a derogation to the public spending code, which would have to come from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform. Upon review of what doing that would actually mean, I met with the county and city managers this morning to talk about housing delivery for this year. We will deliver 10,000 new homes into the social housing stock this year, which is a huge improvement on previous years. Increasing the threshold might save six to eight weeks on our timelines, but we would also risk delaying projects even longer, and in doing so, the Department would lose oversight of 44% of the capital budget for housing. That is too much of a risk. We want to make sure that we are properly overseeing capital spending on behalf of taxpayers. I said yesterday that it would be reckless to lose oversight of more than 44% of the housing budget, and that is why the plan is currently not proceeding.

The Minister does not know what he is talking about. Local authorities-----

There is no trust in them.