Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I will take my own local authority as the example. It certainly is in a perplexing predicament, where there are no targets set for affordable housing, but there are affordability issues. Numerous exercises have carried out in respect of this. The original assessment was based on whether the second-hand homes for sale within a local authority were at a level deemed to be below the 5% threshold. However, when they looked at an external affordability exercise completed by KPMG, the Department then started to approve local authority affordable schemes.

I am trying to understand. There is an issue, but the Department has excluded 18 local authorities. I am not sure of the actual number. I am trying to understand why this happened. Does the Department need to go back to those local authorities about setting affordable housing targets? There is an affordability issue in these counties, and if we are leaving it up to the local authorities to deliver these schemes, they will not. We can see the evidence of that, unless they are being pushed to do it.

I am asking, what is the Department doing on this? It has set really high targets regarding the 55,000 affordable houses it wants to deliver by 2030. However, when one considers at the pace at which it is going - 1,800 delivered in 2022 - can I get an understanding of the target for 2023, and how it is going to achieve that, especially when some local authorities are not engaged to deliver affordable housing?