Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Duffy for his work and support. Those two Acts were crucial. The Affordable Housing Act set down cost rental on a nationwide basis in primary legislation. The Land Development Agency Act, as the Deputy rightly says, is designated for Cork and Dublin in particular, with regard to 100% social and affordable homes. There are some who would wish to ignore the fact that we had 20 weeks of a construction shutdown due to Covid. That was a reality and any Government or development sector, be that public or private, has to acknowledge that when one cannot effectively build for 20 weeks, it makes a difference, especially post the outbreak of the unjustified war in Ukraine, where we saw issues with the supply chain. We have seen significant issues with material inflation as well. We managed those issues as best we could, through the inflation framework that the Government brought in. The overall delivery last year of just short of 30,000 homes was significant. I would not dismiss the delivery - I know the Deputy is not - of 10,253 new social homes. That is significant. While the affordable delivery was below what we had targeted, we do not live in a perfect world and we had to adjust to be able to deliver. Just short of 1,800 affordable homes last year is a good footprint. We wish to do much more this year.

We are seeing a significant uptick in the first-homes scheme with regard to registrations and applications. We have had more applications in the first two and a half months of this year than we did in the first six months of the scheme. That is gaining traction. As I mentioned to Senator Fitzpatrick, we have 42 or 43 affordable housing schemes approved over 15 local authorities throughout the country, to deliver approximately 2,800 new homes and we will do more than that. The LDA can be a very significant vehicle to do so. Some people do not give credit to the local authorities which have been ramping up their social housing delivery. We asked them as well, for the first time in basically 15 years, to get going on affordable housing. That takes time but it is being done. The LDA, the local authorities and the first-home schemes are being done. We are ambitious to do much more this year.