Noel Ahern (Dublin North West, Fianna Fail)

We have a plan as demonstrated by the new policy we announced some time ago. There are also individual action plans and strategies in the local authorities, for which the Department provides resources. The experts are the people on the ground at local authority level. It is good to hear the Deputy's comments on the county manager. Where officials and councillors really wish to drive these issues, progress can be made.

On the striking off of households, the local authorities told us they went to great lengths to contact people on the housing lists. Some people move around through the rent allowance scheme and end up acquiring multiple addresses. I am not sure if there are three separate housing lists in Louth. My constituency straddles the city and Fingal local authority areas and I tell people to register on the lists in both. If there were three lists in County Louth, an assessment to establish the net figure will have resulted in a co-ordination of the names on all of them. We do not consider figures on a monthly basis because while they are much higher, they are not verifiably correct. Most of the names will have been removed from the list in Louth because people were on more than one list. The figure of 43,000 was not equal to the sum for all three local authorities.

We are providing very significant resources amounting to €1.5 billion this year. Over the last couple of years, funding for local and voluntary social housing has increased significantly, especially in the context of the NESC report and the commitments in Towards 2016. Funding has increased by 9% this year and a commitment has been made to provide 27,000 social housing units in the next three years, a figure far in excess of the total provided in the recent past.

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