Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I have not studied the whole report yet, but it is very useful and helpful in trying to quantify the impact of expenditure allocations and targets. Until we had this document, we did not really know what the outcomes were. It is extremely helpful in assessing whether targets set and moneys allocated are actually delivering what they were intended to deliver. It is extremely useful and contains some very useful information. Some of the housing stuff, for example, is extremely interesting on the percentage difference in the net number of households that qualified for social housing since 2016. It is a fascinating figure. This is more down to the Department than the officials, but it is interesting that it has dropped by 32%, 35% and 36%. That is incredible. At a time when more people are unable to afford market prices or rents, fewer people, by a significant margin each year, are entitled to social housing support. That is a shocking fact but it is very helpful for the report to detail that.

There are a lot of useful figures that will be very helpful for us in raising questions and so on. Maybe it is too much to get this information given the nature of the document, but if we take the section on housing, there is a major debate about what social housing actually is. How much of it is delivered by local authorities and approved housing bodies? How much of it is leasing and acquisitions? There are different subcategories of social housing. It would certainly be helpful for me, and maybe the committee generally, to see that broken down in a little more detail. I am interested to know what the officials think about that. Is it just too much for them to break things down to that level of detail, where there are particular controversies and where establishing the facts is helpful? Often, these things are disputed, as the officials know. Will they comment on that?