Pat Casey (Fianna Fail)

I thank everyone for their presentations on what was a topical conversation today on affordable housing. I cannot stress enough the importance of home ownership, the security that brings to a family and the impact it has on the community in which they are involved. It is a piece we have sort of left behind for the last decade. I am not picking specifically on the Department, but its officials are the policymakers in relation to this. We have two organisations here in relation to the delivery of that but with regard to the policy, we are not doing enough when it comes to affordability. I do not think the same emphasis, and I have spoken of this several times, is put on affordability that is put on social. My colleague mentioned it earlier. We need the same energy and effort that is put into social housing to be put into affordable housing.

In that regard, the witnesses gave the figure we hope to achieve of 1,500 on average per year over the next five years, when at the same time we are looking at over 10,000 social houses. The other weakness in this argument is that we do not know how many people are in that affordable gap because once they fall off the social housing list, they are forgotten about. There is no mechanism in place to count the cohort of people who are in that category who fall outside of social housing and cannot afford to buy a home. I honestly believe it is time that, county by county, we count those individuals to get a full understanding of the scale and depth of the affordable crisis that is out there. I honestly think that until we know that, we cannot put a proper plan together. The witnesses might comment on that.