189. Deputy Willie O'Dea asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the way in which the design and build approach is accelerating social housing delivery, cutting costs and expanding capacity; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48064/26]

The Government's Housing Plan, Delivering Homes, Building Communities aims to deliver 300,000 new homes in the period to 2030, including 72,000 social homes. The Plan seeks to enable significant scaling up of delivery of new build social homes to an average of 12,000 per year. The plan includes key measures to support local authorities to scale up delivery commensurate with the increased targets under the plan.

The plan supports additional social housing delivery by mandating the use of standard house layouts and specifications as part of the new approval process and promotes the use of Modern Methods of Construction (MMC) through a standardised design approach. To further promote the delivery of social housing the use of a Design and Build contract approach is being embedded in all local authorities and the AHB sector in order to expedite the delivery of social housing.

Local authorities, supported by my Department, are rapidly expanding their use of the Design and Build (D&B) contract model for new social housing, achieving major gains in both speed and cost efficiency.

Over the past three years, more than 3,000 new social homes have entered the national delivery pipeline, using this approach. My Department also plans to embed the D&B approach within the Approved Housing Body (AHB) sector, ensuring that the same time and cost efficiencies benefit all major public housing delivery channels.

The Design & Build model offers a number of productivity benefits:

• Reduced design time – standard layouts avoid repeated redesign of similar schemes.

• Faster approvals – consistent documentation supports streamlined governance and the new single approval process.

• Integrated delivery model – combining design and construction reduces fragmentation, rework, and delays between project stages.

• Shorter project timelines – overlapping design and construction phases enables earlier starts on site and faster overall delivery.

• Evidence from completed projects suggests time savings of the order of at least 4-6 months in pre-construction and 6-9 months in construction are being achieved depending on project scale and complexity.

• Greater cost and programme certainty – clearer allocation of responsibility to the contractor reduces variation risk and improves planning efficiency.

• Supports innovation and MMC – contractors are incentivised to optimise design solutions and adopt more efficient construction methods, improving overall productivity

• Improved scalability – repeatable design types allow delivery across multiple sites and local authorities.

• Enabler for MMC – A standardised design approach is also recognised as being key in facilitating ease of adoption of MMC.

My Department also publishes the Social Housing Construction Status Report (CSR), which provides details of social housing developments and their location that have been completed, are under construction or are progressing through the various stages of the design and tender processes. The most recent publication was for Quarter 4 2025 and is available on my Departments website. Data for Q1 2026 is being collated and will be available in due course.