Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

I thank our guests for coming in and apologise for keeping them waiting. Today's meeting is focused on affordable housing which is a critical area, obviously. We all know the challenges in housing as a whole but in the earlier session on affordable housing we debated the specific challenges for a cohort of people who find themselves outside the social housing income limits but yet, in many cases, are not having their housing needs met through affordable housing, cost-rental models and so on. It is a very significant challenge and that is something we strongly impressed on the Department in the previous session.

I ask all of the representatives here how do we try to scale up the delivery of cost rental and affordable purchase and get a better balance in terms of our overall delivery of housing? There has been a heavy focus on social housing; that is critically important. We all understand that. Sometimes it can be equated that the more social housing we deliver addresses the homelessness situation to a far greater extent, but every house helps that situation. If we provide an affordable house, it helps the homelessness situation because it frees up a potential rental property, for example, that another family were renting. I am just making the point that I do not think we should just look at homelessness in isolation vis-à-vis social housing. We have to look at it in terms of all the housing models, trying to increase supply and so on. That is sometimes an issue where it is just treated as social housing being the solution to homelessness and I would argue that is not necessarily the case. Specifically, on affordable purchase and cost rental, will the representatives, in a minute each, give a snapshot of what they believe needs to happen to ramp up the delivery of affordable housing and cost rental?