Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. I understand that up to the end of 2005, just over 2,000 units of accommodation were delivered under Part V of the Planning and Development Act and that he expects another 8,000 over the next three years. This is a far cry from the predictions made by the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Deputy Noel Dempsey, when he introduced the Bill in this House. He told us that Part V would produce an additional 35,000 local authority units, help to increase the output of voluntary housing to 4,000 a year and produce 2,000 units per year under the existing local authority affordable and shared ownership schemes. On top of that, we would have the affordable houses expected under Part V.

The output of 2,000 units since the commencement of the Act in 2000 until end-2005 is a far cry from the numbers predicted by the Minister, Deputy Dempsey, 35,000 plus 4,000 per year, which would be another 20,000 units, giving us a total of 55,000 plus the output of the existing schemes. The Minister of State criticised me previously for saying that Part V should have produced 30,000 units, but Deputy Dempsey thought it would produce between 50,000 and 60,000 units. The figure of 2,000 is a poor result against the predictions made.

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