Mr. Daniel McLoughlin:

I thank the committee for the invitation. The housing delivery shown in our opening statement is for the period 2017-2021. The committee asked for three years but we included five to give a better feel for the comparison between that five year period and the current one. We delivered 2,392 units, and 5,300 housing assistance payment, HAP, households also benefitted from housing accommodation policy. The leap going forward in terms of step change is very significant where we are looking to provide 3,699 social homes and 1,566 affordable homes. The significant step change is largely associated with the introduction of Housing for All and the introduction of the affordable sale and cost-rental streams. In our case that is assisted by two significant issues. One issue is the substantial block of funding of approximately €186 million of the urban regeneration and development fund, URDF, for the Clonburris strategic development zone, SDZ, which will allow for the advance development of all enabling common infrastructure. Clonburris SDZ is a housing project for 8,500 homes, and South Dublin County Council has 2,500 homes within that. That is really important, as is the additional financing of resources and the fact that we have, in the last five years, gone from developing smallish sites ranging from ten homes, to the biggest one, which I think was 90 homes. That is a lot of firefighting, planning permission and contracting and site management. We are going from that into managing about a half dozen sites, the smallest of which will comprise maybe 300 to 400 units at a time. Those three issues are facilitating that step change, and that represents our ambition for the next five years.

We have considerably increased our activity with regard to right-sizing. There is a confluence of issues for us, one of which is ageing demographics that is common across Ireland, and particularly in parts of south Dublin inside the M50, one of the older suburbs in Dublin city and county. There is also a degree of analysis by Tallaght University Hospital around this. Our age friendly committee through my colleague, Mr. Ward's team have also done work around it. The numbers going forward are fantastic in terms of life expectancy and so forth but demanding in terms of the State.

Alongside that we have significant issues around under-occupation of social homes, which comes to about 1,100 or 11%. People obviously have the right to reside in those homes. What we are trying to do through our right-sizing policy is encourage people voluntarily to move within their own locality to a right-sized home, providing they are comfortable with that and it fulfils their life expectations moving forward. There will be no obligation on anyone to move. We also have one site under construction, three sites at the tender stage, and four sites at the planning stage. That is eight sites all together, ranging in size from about 12 to 16 in terms of small clusters of housing within existing communities. We also have two or three larger developments, including one for 80 apartments. That is it on right-sizing. We also have a right-sizing policy that allows people to buy into it from private housing on the surrender of their homes.

On Part V, the statistics speak for themselves. On vacancy and dereliction, as a local authority administrative area, we have the lowest vacancy rate in Ireland over the last two census periods. That is reflected in the lack of activity on repair and renew and on the various Government initiatives. For our part, we have brought derelict properties back into use, including three for social housing and two for lease. There are also four derelict properties in one location going through the compulsory purchase order, CPO, process under the derelict sites Act.

Broadly speaking, that is a synopsis of the opening statement.