Response of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to Covid-19: Statements Dail Éireann — 2021-01-28 ============================================================ Darragh O'Brien (FF), Dublin Fingal I will bring in the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, on the rural planning guidelines. The Deputy mentioned an instance of damp and in that case, or if a site needs to be secured during the lockdown, those works could take place on an emergency basis. We ask people to use a commonsensical approach to that, as I am sure they will. That would apply in the instance the Deputy mentioned. The Deputy also mentioned funding and the SME sector that is going to be crucial in delivering the housing stock that we need. Coincidentally, I engaged this morning about a couple of issues around banks and finance firms that apply to equipment. We will be working on that, particularly for the five weeks of the lockdown, and that should not affect any firm's credit rating, particularly on the SME side. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2021-01-28/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:00+00:00 Sitting date: 2021-01-28