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

I am talking about adding to the social housing stock. Unfortunately, the State sold much of its stock, which, with the benefit of hindsight, was probably a mistake in certain instances. We are committing a huge sum. Of the available additional capital that can be allocated in the upcoming budget, 60% will go on social housing. We will allocate more to social housing than to education, health, transport and everything else combined. Anybody who thinks we do not have a commitment across government to social housing needs to examine what we are doing in terms of prioritising funding allocations given the competing demands that are there. This is a big strategy for social housing. The most significant pressure is how quickly this housing can be built and how the systems and decision-making around the building of those projects can be driven to get them under way faster through Part VIII, other planning processes, using public land, streamlining decision-making processes and so on.

I accept the criticism regarding the over-reliance in the past on the private sector in respect of providing social housing solutions for many people. That was exposed by the property crash when people stopped building. However, we are planning for the future now and we are committing huge sums of available capital. The social housing build programme is dominant in the context of our capital commitments over the next five or six years but I also have to make sure the private housing sector begins functioning again. Last year, 12,500 houses were built. Half of them were one-off houses in the countryside. A significant portion of the other half was generated by finishing off unfinished housing estates and apartment blocks. The number of new starts last year, therefore, was between 3,000 and 4,000. That level of supply needs to be dramatically corrected. It is encouraging that there has been a dramatic increase in the number of new starts, planning applications and completions for the seven months of this year in comparison with the same period last year.

While the level of increase is not as great as is needed, it is nonetheless a significant increase. I reassure members that things are starting to work. The number of completions throughout the country in the first eight months of 2016 was 9,167 houses, which is a 19% increase on the first eight months of last year. The number of house completions in Dublin in the same period was 2,620, which is an increase of 46% on the number of completions in the first eight months of last year.