Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for the presentation. Like the Chairman, I welcome the fact that the Minister is giving a commitment to work on a cross-party and independent basis, as it is really important. The proof is going to be in the content of the action plan. Certainly, for our party, the two key elements will be the extent to which the plan departs from what we are clearly of the view were the failings of Government policy until this point; and the action it takes to increase supply, in particular, of social housing.

One of the difficulties I have with the presentation is that there still seems to be a lack of full understanding as to the crisis at the social housing end of the sector. Many of the organisations that have come to us, particularly those that represent people who are at risk of or in homelessness, have said those are people for whom the market is not going to provide solutions. It is that social housing sector, broadly defined, that is key. For example, when we look at the Minister's comments on the diagnosis, it is not just a result of the collapse of the property market at the start of the recession. For more than a decade and a half before that the State was withdrawing from serious provision of social housing. The reason we can say that is that during the whole period from the early to mid-1990s, the number of people in housing need, whether they were claiming rent supplement or other social supports, was dramatically increasing, as were social housing waiting lists. Even when the State was building more houses than it had ever done before, the level of housing need as defined by the Department's measures was increasing.

I am also concerned that the Minister is still overly reliant on the private sector and a low level of investment, as per Social Housing 2020. Expenditure of €3.8 billion over six years is not a significant level of direct Government investment. Even if it leverages outside investment, it is still relatively low in historical terms and it cannot be said enough that 80% of units as envisaged under that plan are private sector-owned units subsidised by the State, so they are market units, not social units, however we define them. Until we see a departure from that over-reliance on the private sector, we are going to have the same problem.

I will make my questions very brief. There are many things for the Minister to consider in the run-up to developing a plan. Our party strongly argues that he needs to increase significantly the supply of social housing but also to broaden the definition of who is covered under social housing in order that we have not just differential rent social housing but also cost-rental and affordable purchase for lower-income families. If he moves in that direction towards housing directly supplied by the State, he would have a much better impact on the crisis and stabilisation of the housing system.

We also need to increase and change the model of funding social housing and, crucially, tackle procurement. I am a little surprised that the Minister keeps talking about planning as the key problem causing the delay. I am not saying there are not problems in the planning system, but the greatest delay in the provision of public housing and social housing is the lengthy approval of the procurement process between the Minister's Department, the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform and the local authorities. Unless that is reduced, we are going to have the same problems.

The third issue, which the Housing Agency continually talks about, is managing the existing stock. It has given us a report stating that there are 230,000 vacant units. We know those are 2011 figures and that when the census comes out, it will show a significantly reduced number of vacant units around the State. That is not contested.