Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Higgins, in the first instance, for all of her work on this committee in support of the Housing for All strategy. The year 2022 is going to be a very significant one. The Deputy has outlined a number of different funding streams for the delivery of affordable housing. I have been out in Tandy's Lane with the Deputy also. I see our local authorities, like South Dublin County Council and others, are very progressive in driving things forward. We need more of that and we are providing the funding to do that.

I mentioned something else to Deputy Ó Broin earlier on in a response, which is that I want our local authorities and its our members to have transparency over what the targets are in their own areas which is important. We all know that we have to deliver new homes for people across our social, affordable, private and cost rental sectors. I believe it will be very significant if we can deliver and build more than 4,000 affordable homes this year basically from nothing, which I intend that we do.

The Deputy asked about the housing commission and the referendum. The commission has been established and had its first meeting under the chairpersonship of John O’Connor. This will be a superb commission comprising a good group of people with a breadth of knowledge and experience. Part of its terms of reference is to proceed with work on the provision of details for a referendum on housing. It is something that we have committed to in the programme for Government and which I would like to see. The commission, independently of me, will be working on that. It is up and running and is doing that work already.

On social housing which the Deputy has also asked about, we set a new-build target of 9,000 houses in one year. That will be very significant and will require all of our local authorities, including my Department, to be working together to deliver something that they have never come close to in recent years. This is a significant jump up but the pipeline is good, not just for this year but for next year and into the future. We need to be able to support that through resources. That is why the Minister of State, Deputy Burke, and I made the announcement in respect of additional housing staff, engineers, quantity surveyors and architects. Those skills at local authority level right across the country are so important. I hope I have responded to the points raised by the Deputy and I thank the Chairman.