Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I wish to follow up on the housing issue and clarify what might be called the war of the figures with regard to the social housing crisis. It is not the Chairman's fault, and I am not sure where the responsibility lies, but we do not have enough time to do what we should be doing here. There must be a forensic analysis of these figures. If the OECD has condemned the Oireachtas, quite correctly, for a spectacular failure in measuring outputs against Estimates and so forth and if we are promising we will do something about that, this is not a good example. We have an hour and a quarter to deal with the outputs for the money spent. Perhaps the Minister will respond to that point, because the topic we are dealing with here is Estimates and outputs.

What we are engaged in is not satisfactory and not serious budget scrutiny.

Where are the figures which we certainly need for the numbers of new applicants on local authority housing lists this year? All of the figures the Minister has given us are meaningless or, at least, seriously deficient when it comes to forming a true picture of what is happening in dealing with the housing issue. The data serve no purpose unless all estimates, projections and outputs are set against the numbers of new applicants. If we had these figures, I am confident they would show there will be more people on the housing lists at the end of this year than there were at the beginning of it. To give an example, 100 people are joining the housing list in Dún Laoghaire every month, which amounts to 1,200 in a year, but Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council delivered zero houses last year. The numbers are pitiful everywhere else. We cannot get a real sense of whether we are beginning even to make an impact on the catastrophic housing lists unless we are able to measure the data against the numbers of new applicants this year. I am asking the Minister for a commitment that we will get these figures. If he does not have them now, will he give them to us soon? It should be part of his brief to contact every local authority in the country to find out how many new applicants they have had on a month by month basis.

Will the Minister accept that the targets he has set for 2015 completely misrepresent the plan to deal with the social housing emergency? What I mean by this is that his target for 2015 was 15,925 under all categories, namely, acquisition, construction, capital assistance, regeneration, voids, vacant units, leasing, the rental accommodation scheme, the housing assistance payment scheme and so on. However, there is a large distinction between long-term leasing, the RAS and HAP schemes, all of which are dependent on the private sector and most of which do not actually involve the provision of new accommodation for those on the lists. I do not see how the Minister can deliver on the targets he has set in this regard, given that he has failed spectacularly to do so thus far. However, even if he does deliver, does he accept that none of it involves new accommodation? In fact, it is simply a case of recategorising people who are already in rented accommodation as being housed. There is no new social housing; people will remain in the private housing they have been in all along, but they will now be counted under a different category.

If we are to have any meaningful assessment of the level of delivery of new social housing, we should only be talking about construction, acquisition, capital assistance and regeneration projects. In fact, regeneration projects do not provide new accommodation, nor does the restoration of voids and vacant properties. The only meaningful figures are those which concern construction, acquisition and the capital assistance scheme. The Minister's targets were 946 units for construction and 440 for capital assistance. I understand the number to be delivered under the construction heading is 422 units, although the Minister might be able to give an update on that figure, and 157 under the capital assistance scheme. In other words, less than half the target figure has been delivered. The Minister is saying he will meet the targets and in one case exceed them. How does he propose to achieve this, given that we are less than two months from the end of the year?

Even if the Minister does meet those targets, we are talking about only 1,300 new social housing units against a background where, according to my estimation, some 15,000 new applicants will have come onto the list by year end. In other words, we are effectively going backwards.

The Minister said local authorities may use revenues from the local property tax as they see fit. Will he explain how Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council has €10 million allocated for social housing for 2015 from the local property tax but is not allowed to spend that money because it is apparently "awaiting instructions" from the Minister and has been for the past year? That is according to the management of the council.