Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for her question. She will have noted the comments made, particularly by the Tánaiste in recent days, in respect of social repair, the necessity for social housing and the necessity to restructure many of the systems to reflect the difficulties people have had arising from the economic collapse a number of years ago. It is because of social welfare transfers - social welfare payments - the at-risk-of-poverty level has been reduced by 61%. The structure of how social welfare payments have been made is of direct assistance to the local economies because it is spent in those economies.

This morning the Government gave authorisation to the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government to proceed to draft heads of a Bill in respect of approved housing authorities with particular reference to social housing, which is an issue of pressure in this city and other areas. Given the scale of the economic collapse a number of years ago, clearly the priority had to be to rectify our public finances and get our house in order, and for that reason to have our deficit below 3% by 2015, which target will be achieved.

The sacrifices of the people in recent years have benefitted our country's standing in terms of improvement of our economic performance. We now need to spread that benefit through the different regions of the country. That is why housing and social repair in many of these vulnerable communities is of such importance. All of these are set out in the economic strategy statement approved by the Government last week. It is our intention to implement those targets and objectives to the benefit of people all over the country. It is not a case of focusing on particular areas where there is a problem now and just dealing with that. It is clear that the sacrifices people made need to be reflected in the benefit for the people and that is where we need to be.

The statement of economic strategy reflects very strongly the issues of social repair and how we intend to deal with social deprivation in the time ahead. It is a balance between continuing to get the economy on a growth pattern while at the same time being able to reflect that in dealing with socially vulnerable areas as outlined by the Tánaiste on a number of occasions.

See this speech in context