Mr. John McCarthy:

The approach in Rebuilding Ireland and the policy decision that was taken was to aim to deliver, from within a particular pool of resources, as close to a target of 50,000 new social housing units as possible, as per the recommendation of the Oireachtas Committee on Housing and Homelessness that was established in 2016. Clearly, on the basis of capital cost, it would not have been possible to fund that because the capital resources were not available. It would also not have been deliverable in the timeframe required because construction takes time and, as we know, construction had virtually ground to a halt. The mix of approaches between construction, acquisition, lease, RAS and HAP, that are in Rebuilding Ireland reflect a policy balance between getting as many units as possible through the capital side while also determining what was needed on the current programme side to be able to achieve the 50,000 by 2021.

Historically, we got into the business of leasing-type programmes in 2008 or 2009, when the market had crashed. In 2010 or 2011, an analysis was done by the Housing Agency that examined capital and current models which showed them to be broadly similar in terms of costs, depending on the assumptions one makes. More recently, as part of the 2019 budgetary process, we asked the Irish Government Economic and Evaluation Service to undertake an analysis of the kind to which the Deputy refers. That was published as part of the budgetary process. The conclusion that the service came to was that in certain parts of the country, it may be more expensive, while in other parts of the country, it is less so. The broad conclusion arrived at was that the change in the mix of housing delivery mechanisms more towards capital delivered mechanisms over the course of Rebuilding Ireland was the way to go. When we get to 2021, for example, we will deliver more housing solutions in that year through build, acquisition and lease rather than through RAS and HAP.