Ms Clare Costello:

Hopefully I will have no further technical difficulties. The report that the Deputy refers to is an IGEES report that was produced by our Department in 2018. It is important to set a little context around the paper. It was based on data from 2016 and 2017 when the capital programmes of the local authorities were beginning to start and to ramp up. Obviously, there had been a significant drop-off in the capital expenditure as a result of the fiscal consolidation in the early part of the last decade. It was only beginning to start to ramp up as the paper was produced. At the time the paper was produced, the split between current and capital expenditure on the housing programme was approximately 50:50. As the Rebuilding Ireland programme was rolled out by the local authorities, the funding has shifted dramatically from current to capital. For social housing delivery, there is now a split of approximately 30:70 across the delivery of social housing supports, whether current supports, that is, RAS, HAP or rent supplement, or capital expenditure on building and acquisition. This year, the overall capital budget is about €1.8 billion and the social housing delivery aspect of that is about €1.5 billion. We are seeing the shift in the split of the expenditure. The forthcoming Housing for All strategy, which the Department is currently working on will reflect the programme for Government commitments around increasing the social housing stock. That is something everyone is acutely aware of. The report was done when there had been a reorientation of expenditure, which enabled the needs of citizens to be met in the short term. Now there is obviously a consciousness of meeting those needs in the longer term also.