Anne Rabbitte (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister and the Minister of State before the committee. I acknowledge the work they are doing in both of their respective areas. The Department recently published a league table on social housing by each local authority. It shows the significant ones that have delivered and performed and those that are underperforming. There is nothing like a league table when you are looking at local politics to attract your eye. I looked at the league tables over the past three years. My county of Galway is underperforming. That is one part of it. I also looked at Cork, where the Minister of State, Deputy O’Sullivan, is from. I always like to compare Cork and Galway because we both have two city and county councils.

When we add Cork City Council and Cork County Council together, they delivered 2,993 social houses in the last three years. When I add up what Galway City Council and Galway County Council did in exactly the same time, the total was 1,062 social houses. We would always like to think in Galway that we are of a similar size to Cork and we would also think we have the same breadth. When the Minister looks at this league table, he will see that the top 14 are performing over 100% delivery, which is really ambitious. The next seven, then, bring us to 70% delivery and over. What is the Minister doing in this regard? Would the Minister like to share the conversations he is having with the local authorities to get them to at least a minimum of 70% delivery on their social housing targets? I am not even looking for 100%, but to get the bottom ten up to 70%.