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

I thank the Chairman for those observations. I thank her for recognising all the work of the Department. Transparency fuels accountability. The Department is probably unique in inviting in committee members to go through the figures in detail so everyone can have the same knowledge of these issues as departmental officials. We all share the common goal of meeting this challenge head on and resolving it.

The Rebuilding Ireland home loan has been a success. It is another measure that has been successful under Rebuilding Ireland but some people do not want to recognise that. When people say they would throw out Rebuilding Ireland, I wonder whether they would throw out the Rebuilding Ireland home loan. I do not believe so. Would they throw out rent pressure zones, the social housing building programme or the 21,000-plus new places available to live last year? I do not believe so. Would they throw out HAP? I do not believe so, even though they criticise it. Therefore, the Chairman was right to make her points. It is not to say the work is complete; it is nowhere near it. We are only half way through but progress has been made quickly. We are playing catch-up but we are catching up. We are going to continue to do that as best we can, and with the support of this committee. We will talk about the rent Bill shortly. We will have very positive engagement. It is a real model for how we can get something done in the best interest of everybody.

With regard to evidence-based policy formation and the rigour of the rent Bill, the Chairman was dead right to make her point in this regard. It is important. The anti-eviction Bill and the anti-eviction measures that have been mooted without any proper investigation have spooked landlords at a time when we are losing landlords and when more people are presenting at emergency accommodation. One has to see the connection between the two. There is a law and there is an unintended consequence that people are not bearing in mind when they make pronouncements. I really wish they would do so.

On the Shanganagh proposal, it was shared with me. The Department began to look at it. We are making progress but I accept it has been too slow. There is a multi-stream approach to social housing. If we just had local authorities building social housing on local authority land and a local authority went bust or something else happened, social housing building would stop. That is exactly what happened in the past. Building was essentially outsourced to the private sector through Part V. That stopped and social housing almost ground to a halt. We are rebuilding it using a number of streams of delivery. I refer to build delivery but also to other resources, such as acquisition and leasing, which will protect our ambitions in terms of increasing the stock of social housing.

The Brexit report produced by the Oireachtas committee was very welcome. Well done. I am thankful for the acknowledgement of Ms Sarah Neary's work in this area.

With regard to delivery, we want local authorities to exceed targets. I want to be battling in regard to additional financial resources each year. That is the position I was in last year. I was looking for more money because we were delivering more and we exceeded the targets we had for social housing supports last year. We will continue to do that this year.