Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are quite a few questions there. In respect of local authority funding to build houses, about €1.6 billion was made available to local authorities for a three-year period so there is a significant amount of capital available for local authorities to build. About €124 million has been made available for Cork City Council, while about €80 million has been made available to Cork County Council over that three-year period. A significant amount of house building is not taking place nationally or in those particular areas. The money is there and it is being used for various different things, mainly around acquisitions of properties to add to the social housing stock, which is also necessary.

There needs to be an acceptance that there is a role for private sector developers to increase supply as well as local authorities. There is a belief that we should not look at tax breaks because somehow decisions that were made in the past around private developers and the margins they were making caused all sorts of knock-on problems and consequences. However, this does not mean that we should not look at ways in which we can ensure a private developer can make an acceptable margin and, therefore, progress developments.

Undoubtedly, the solution to increasing supply lies across a series of bodies, both public and private, building and delivering homes for people. I am not solely focusing on one area or the other. A significant priority will be given to supporting local authorities and AHBs to acquire and build homes.

Making simplistic calculations around Part V being the only mechanism to deliver and reduce waiting lists assumes that the people can never move off the waiting lists, which I do not accept. It also assumes that the only delivery mechanism is through private sector Part V provision at the bare minimum of 10%, which is not true either. There are many examples of developers who are currently considering doing deals with AHBs or local authorities, in some cases for 100% of the development. There is an idea that there should only be 10% but that is the minimum required. We need to ensure, under Part V, that every development in the country is required to have at least 10% social housing. However, many developments will go way beyond that. Some will be built by a private developer and the entire development may well be given over for an affordable housing scheme, rent-to-buy scheme, social housing or a mix of these. Somebody asked regarding the Irish Glass Bottle site, for example, which has the potential for 2,500 or 3,000 housing, whether only 10% of that would be devoted to social housing. Of course not; we hope to get way more than that in an appropriate mix. All Part V does is guarantee a minimum but, in the context of many developments, it will be in the developer's interest or the local authority's interest to go way beyond that. There will be opportunities to improve the cash-flow and financing arrangements of private developers by them doing deals early with AHBs or local authorities, which may allow them to get cash upfront to deliver the social housing element of a mixed development first, which, in turn, will help finance the private development subsequently. We need to examine the housing market in the context of public and private elements.

Deputy Coppinger made a point about trying to understand the quantities that will be provided under the social housing programme and she asked a fair question. There is an aspiration under the social housing strategy to provide 35,600 new units between now and 2020. According to the way that figure breaks down for the anticipated delivery, approximately 22,000 units will be new build. However, this figure is not cast in stone by a long shot. We are examining ways we can go considerably beyond it. The strategy was signed off in 2014 during a different period for financing, in particular, and the pressures Ireland was under regarding the on and off balance sheet argument. As we move into a different space financially, we may well find that we can be more ambitious than that. However, if 22,000 social houses can be built in the next five years, that would be significantly more than the number delivered for many years. We can, though, go beyond that. We have not finalised those figures but the Deputy asked for a sense of where is the social housing strategy and that is a fair reflection.

NAMA has the capacity to build a lot of houses, which it will, but we need to be careful we do not turn it into something that would create many more problems than currently exist. If NAMA can deliver 20,000 housing units and include a lot of social housing in that mix - and if it can do so off-balance sheet - this would be a good outcome. It is not restricted in the way that publicly financing local authority build is in terms of the fiscal rules so we need to be sensible in terms of what we demand of NAMA. I am quite demanding of it and have met its representatives a number of times. We want it to deliver in this area for us.