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

I will respond to Deputy Coppinger's questions first because she might need to leave. She said the focus on private houses is not a solution. This is a housing strategy as well as a homelessness strategy. We are trying to deal with multiple pressures and challenges across the housing sector, whether it involves a first-time buyer trying to buy a house, a chief executive from a multinational who is trying to buy or rent at high rates, dealing with a fundamental deficit in supply versus demand or trying to ensure that vulnerable people get the supports they need from the State. Many of them are under huge pressure and are very exposed in a way they should not be in a normal, functioning property market in which there are sufficient numbers of social housing and so forth. We are trying to do everything here. To look at this plan through the lens of homelessness alone would not be fair. Of course, that is the priority for me. That is why it is the first chapter and why we spent a long time discussing it when we met last week.

This is about trying to ensure those who can afford to buy or rent their own homes have properties in the right places at an affordable price, where possible. The more people who can access their own homes with their own resources, the less pressure there will be on the State and the more resources we can allocate to people who need our help. There are many people on the margins who may be just above the threshold and, therefore, do not qualify to be on a social housing list. We need to respond to their needs to try to keep them off the list. Many of them do not want to be on the list. They want to access properties to rent or purchase. That is why are introducing a new so-called cost rental category, for example.

I acknowledge there is a big emphasis on the construction industry and building private houses on private land as well as a big emphasis on dramatically increasing the social housing stock, but both are important. There is a significant imbalance in this sector and I do not want to add to that. We need to develop a progressive, balanced sector along multiple strands, all at the same time, and that is what makes this so difficult. If this were simply a social housing strategy, we would focus on building as many social houses as we could in the right places as quickly as we could. While we are focused on that, we have to focus on many other issues as well. Otherwise more families will be pushed into this category. If families are given some assistance by the State or if supply increases, they will be able to access their own sustainable housing solution.

However, I recognise we face huge pressures in respect of social housing. We do not have a high enough percentage of our overall stock in social housing. My understanding is approximately 8% of the national housing stock is social housing or local authority housing through an approved housing body, AHB, or whatever whereas the average in Europe is approximately 17%. We have a great deal of catching up to do and that is why this plan is about increasing the overall social housing stock by between 30% and 40% over five or six years. That is a significant ambition which we will deliver. We propose to deliver an additional 47,000 social housing units over that period, with 26,000 to be built exclusively for social housing, 11,000 to be acquired from the market, a portion of which will be new builds, while the remaining 10,000 will be leased by local authorities and AHBs. These leases will be long term, for 25 or 30 years in most cases, with an option to review at the end of them. These are long-term, sustainable housing solutions. Sometimes leasing allows one to do something off-balance sheet that one might be unable to do on-balance sheet.

We have discussed the asset residential property service, NARPS, model used by NAMA. I opened a good social housing scheme linked to that model in recent weeks. We need to consider the reality of what we are facing and then implement practical solutions to build, acquire housing and put long-term leasing arrangements in place using funding vehicles to allow us to generate the maximum return within the spending rules by which we have to abide. That is what this plan is all about.

I take the point that Deputy Coppinger's constituency needs to be a focal point in the context of families and individuals becoming homeless and I am happy to meet officials from Fingal County Council. My officials at the most senior level met them only last week to discuss this issue and, therefore, this conversation is happening. I am happy have a political conversation with the councillors from the area and I am committed to meeting representatives of all four Dublin local authorities. We have only had an opportunity to have a proper political conversation with two of them so far but I will engage with both Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and Fingal County Council.

I will come back to the Deputy on the individual site she mentioned but I would like to have an informed answer on that site, which is ready to go and should be progressing. I would need to check before I give her an answer.