In the Deputy's constituency, which happens to be mine, which I know very well, we will be delivering affordable homes in Lusk and Rush this year. I do not want to be too colloquial about it. She will be aware of that. There are more than 90 active sites in the area. I believe in home ownership, as does my party and the Government.

That is the reason we want to help first-time buyers. I do not want to shoot schemes down before they have even been seen. We will deliver home ownership for young people.

We will deliver affordable rental in the constituency too.

All Deputy O'Reilly and her colleagues want to do is shoot down anything-----

-----because what they really want to do is to capitalise politically. I am interested in getting people safe homes to live in-----

-----public and private. We will do that.

Does Deputy Barry wish to contribute and I will respond to both Deputies then?

I will do my best to respond in the 23 seconds remaining. Under the programme for Government, the SHDs will expire at the end of the year. That is what has been agreed between the three parties. I believe in public housing on public land. I believe in real affordable housing but I also believe in delivering it. I do not know whether Deputy Barry, when he was a councillor in Cork, ever voted for a development plan but I sincerely doubt it. We will move forward with the biggest single investment in public housing in …

I thank Deputy McAuliffe for his intervention and for affording me some time to respond to some of the charges. The level of aggression, particularly from the Sinn Féin Members in the questioning and barraging in which they have engaged, has been telling. I get a sense that the reason they are so focused on the affordable housing scheme is that they do not want it to work because they want people to be disaffected. They do not want the housing crisis to be dealt with. They see the progress being made by this new Go…

I thank the Deputy for her contribution but our changes have not failed. They have been in place for less than six months. We have increased the eligibility limit for the single-stage approval process to €6 million. I have met the chief executives and directors of services of all the main local authorities either virtually or in person to set their housing targets for 2021, leaving aside Covid. The change to the single-stage approval process will work but it needs to be given a little bit of time. Even the Deputy a…

I thank Deputy Tóibín for his question. The Deputy will understand why I will not refer to a specific case, but every death of a person accessing homeless services is an absolute tragedy. My condolences and those of the Government go to that gentleman, his family and his friends. I said that we would investigate this issue. The deaths of those accessing homeless services constitute a complex issue, as the Deputy is aware. I have written to him before stating that many who unfortunately die while accessing homeless …

I will do my level best to try to do so. No one is operating with any degree of ignorance here. I assure the Deputy of that. I have already answered on the issue of homeless deaths. On local connection, the Deputy did raise this issue in the Dáil previously. This process was changed and that did not just happen just on foot of what the Deputy had said. I announced the change on 7 December and issued an instruction to all local authorities, not just those in Dublin, in a letter dated 9 December. Local connection is …

I ask the Deputy to refer the details to me and I will have someone look into the specific cases.

Yes, I will gladly do so. I know the Deputy's constituency well and also the area to which he referred. It is a designated growth area providing much-needed homes. The assessment of URDF applications has concluded and the work of assessing applications is ongoing, with a view to making announcements in this regard in the first quarter, hopefully by the end of February. While that may not be possible, the timeframe is certainly February or March. I note and recognise the Deputy's full support for the project, and he…

The Deputy has made a good point. We have changed the regulations to permit that method of inspection and we encourage all local authorities to proceed on that basis. The pandemic poses difficulties for local authorities but there is no reason people should be living in substandard accommodation. In the budget, we also allocated significant additional funding for the Residential Tenancies Board, RTB, and inspectors in local authorities to ensure inspections take place and accommodation is at the required standard. …

I thank Deputy Hourigan for her question and the points raised. I want to be clear, once more, that the issue of local connection is not a barrier to anyone accessing emergency accommodation. I followed up that letter of the 9th, which the Deputy referred to, of an announcement I had made on the 7th, and have had a meeting since with the local authorities, with housing officers and with the DRHE. I have had a couple of meetings quite recently and we followed that up with an additional letter, which I am happy to sh…

Those are regulations from the first level 5 restrictions earlier this month. The regulations are being worked through right now and will be published later on this evening or tomorrow. Obviously, where people need certain works done so they can get into their house in the short term, we ask them to take a pragmatic and realistic approach on that and if someone is a week away from getting into a house that the work would continue in a safe manner to allow that family have a safe home. We are doing further work with…

When did the Deputy write to me?

I will respond to both Deputies in writing. Deputy Collins' figures on the homeless numbers are from 2019 . Thankfully, since then more than 2,000 people have exited homelessness. The 2020 November figures will show a great improvement, down nearly 19% overall and nearly 40% for child and family homelessness. On the issues of rural planning, the Minister of State, Deputy Burke, and I will respond directly. We have answered other Deputies earlier and we will get a written response to both Deputies in the coming days…

I am.