Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I apologise if, following on some of the points arising from the housing summit, I repeat a questiont hat was asked earlier. Inviting the local authority managers in for a summit seems to be a reactive thing which is done when the housing and homelessness figures are released and show a large increase. People view it quite cynically. If the Minister wanted a real summit, one would imagine that members of the Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government would be invited, as well as other interest groups. I understand that the Minister cannot host a massive event.

Some of the things that came out of the summit were cherry-picked by the media. One of them was moving families out of Dublin and the refusal of offers; these things are merely tinkering around the edges. They do not deal with the key issue, which is the lack of social house building. The Minister announced an increase in the target of 30%, I think, which is 800 new social houses. That would bring the target up to 5,000 social houses in 2018. That is still far below what would have been natural in previous decades and is even below what was done by the Government before last in the early 2000s. It does not reflect a housing emergency. These points are being made again and again.

I would have thought that if one were commandeering land to deal with an emergency, one would look at where there are landbanks in key areas in which there is a problem with homelessness. The Department's website is excellent in some ways. There is a very good graphic over four pages which shows, very clearly, exactly how many people are homeless in each city. I looked at the website recently. Almost 70% of those who are homeless are in to Dublin, then there is spillover into adjacent counties such as Kildare and Meath. I was surprised to see that the figure for Limerick is higher than that for Cork. I would have expected Cork to be higher. Then there is Galway. We have said repeatedly, if one were to zone in on the problem, there are three or four areas that are really problematic. Every area has a problem, but the midlands does not have an issue in comparison with other places. This is not a difficult issue. Will the Minister look at the landbanks in the areas to which I refer that are owned by local authorities or that are under NAMA's control and focus on those? One interesting development-----