Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister and his team for attending. The Minister said his Department cannot control all the factors affecting housing, which I understand. Deputy Funchion spoke about rent supplement. I represent the people of Waterford city and county. The rent supplement in Waterford is €520. That is one of the issues because people cannot rent houses in the area for less than €650 or €700. There will need to be joined-up thinking involving both Departments.

The chief executive of Roscommon County Council appeared before the committee on Tuesday. He pointed out that local authorities are not developers. His submission stated, "Even if we had the adequate resource to build on our lands, the regulations stipulate that we can only build 10-15% for social housing." I am very concerned about that because the Department is putting most of its eggs into on basket in terms of the local authorities supplying housing and the chief executive of Roscommon County Council stated, on behalf of the County and City Management Association, that they can only build 10% to 15% for social housing. As a short-term fix, does the Minister see merit in putting extensions on existing social houses within local authority stock in order to meet family demands as opposed to waiting two years to move them into other houses? I refer to extending houses that are not for people with health-specific problems. That should definitely be considered because it would be a quicker fix.

I feel we missed an opportunity to support social housing through the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund. The fund will spend €750 million of its current €3 billion cash balance before the end of 2016 on a range of projects. It missed the opportunity to invest some of that money in social housing.

I welcome the Minister's comments as to what would make a difference.