Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There is no change in strategy. We have to make sure we get these numbers out, that they are published and that they are accurate numbers which people can stand over. In regard to future reporting of numbers, work is going on in the Department to see how we can improve the numbers behind the numbers. As they are published at the moment, these numbers are not really telling people anything - it is just a number one month and a number the next month, with no trends or background data. Therefore, we are doing work around how we can improve the numbers. I would have hoped it would be ready so we could begin our reporting for this year with that new framework, but it may not be. It is never easy to try to come up with data sets and to be able to get into the numbers as quickly as we would like.

With regard to the 7,000 figure for stock, if we are entering into a long-term lease arrangement and we are the landlord, then we can say that is the stock of social housing because it is a secure tenancy for that person and is a very different situation from being in the private rented sector. I believe we can count that in the stock of social housing. We were very clear in the report, and when I published the figures for 2017, that this is what we were counting. For the tenant who is living in that house, there is no difference as to whether the local authority built it or someone else did. The landlord is the local authority or the AHB and the tenant has a secure tenancy for the lifetime of that lease arrangement. It is important to point that out.

We had a lengthy discussion in regard to voids earlier in the committee session. When we started the voids and vacancies programme, we were talking about homes that were boarded up and derelict. Huge progress was made and thousands were brought back into use, although there are still some derelicts which are counted in our void numbers. Eventually, there will not be a voids figure and we will just be talking about casual vacancies, where a property is empty for two or three weeks and is quickly turned around. We do not have casual vacancies in our voids figures as matters stand. We are talking about homes where, if a significant amount of money had not been put into them, they would be vacant today. If I were to say to local authorities that properties have to be vacant for more than 12 months, we would be putting the wrong incentive into the system and there is a risk a local authority would keep a void vacant so it could then avail of that capital money after a 12-month period. The figures for 2017 show our target was 766 whereas the output was 1,757, so it was 229% of our target, although this was actually down 551 units, or 24%, on 2016. We are making huge progress on voids.