Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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The Deputy mentioned the target of 560 voids. The number is diminishing every year. The voids which are essentially council house vacancies are the low-hanging fruit which have been targeted by the Department for a number of years to bring them back into use as social housing stock. We are not talking about casual vacancies when we talk about voids. While previously properties had to be in the system for a length of time to be classified as long-term voids, that was removed to take away any potential to have an incentive to keep properties as voids to avail of funding. We are talking about properties that potentially would be long-term voids if this funding was not spent to bring them back into use. It is a significant amount of funding. When we talk about a potential sum of €30,000 being spent, it is not a small amount compared with the amount allowed for under the repair and lease scheme, for example. These are properties that would be vacant if the money was not spent and so are part of the voids programme. To ensure there was no doubt about what we were doing, I took the number of voids out of the build target when we started to publish data in order that people would be clear that we were not counting them as builds. We should be clear that the number has been diminishing every year. As we get to the end of the programme, we are, I think, talking about 130 voids, but it might not even be that figure, depending on how much progress we can make with the properties in the coming few years.

Potentially enhanced leasing is very positive for the State. We are talking about the ability to leverage private finance to provide social housing, taking all of the risk on the build side that the State would not have to take.

Significantly, and as reflected in the market rent that is acquired, private finance also takes on all of the liability costs for the buildings over the course of the 25 years, which is a longer-term lease than we have had previously. This takes into account maintenance fees, service charges and all of those things that a local authority might have had to pay under a different lease agreement. The private body will have to expend a significant amount of money over the lifetime of the lease agreement, which represents a considerable saving to the State. This is the reason for the 92% discount.

It is important to recognise that potential rent increases will arise every three years under the scheme and be linked to the harmonised indices of consumer prices, HICP. There is also a process under which any disagreement or difficulty that arises will be clarified. The enhanced leasing arrangement, which is coming to a finalisation point with expressions of interest, will represent a gain to the State in terms of the potential new properties that we will be able to leverage.

A question was asked about the fourth table and the second set of three rows. The first figure of 5,869 comprises 4,409 builds, 560 voids and 900 acquisitions. The second figure of 4,969 just underneath that comprises builds and voids and does not include acquisitions. The 3,209 figure relates to local authority builds and includes regeneration, voids and Part V housing. That is how the figures have been separated and explains the difference between the figures in the second set of three rows regarding the 2018 target.