Michael Finneran (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fianna Fail)

The overall objective of Government housing policy, as set out in the Delivering Homes, Sustaining Communities policy statement published in February 2007, is to enable every household to have available an affordable dwelling of good quality, suited to its needs, in a good environment and, as far as possible, at the tenure of its choice. When viewed in this context, the issue of affordability of housing is, therefore, dependent on the circumstances of each individual household. The policy statement recognises this clearly in its aim of putting in place a graduated range of supports for those households requiring assistance in meeting their housing needs.

We have made considerable progress in recent years in meeting housing needs through the broad range of social and affordable housing programmes. In 2007 alone, more than 13,000 social and affordable housing units were delivered and, overall, the needs of almost 18,300 households were met across the housing spectrum. That represents a significant increase of 24% on the level of need met in 2006 and a significant step towards assisting an average of 20,000 households per annum over the seven years of the National Development Plan, 2007-2013, the NDP.

All the indications available to us at this stage suggest 2008 will be another year of significant delivery under the main housing programmes. Looking to the future, the results of the 2008 housing needs assessment to be finalised shortly will show a significant increase in overall net housing need, against a background of a significantly more constrained fiscal environment. While this presents a challenging scenario, the €1.66 billion in funding provided for housing in the 2009 Estimates will allow us to maintain strong momentum towards meeting our commitments in the Towards 2016 social partnership agreement and our longer-term goals under the NDP. In particular, progress will be underpinned by the continued roll-out of the rental accommodation scheme and new initiatives including the sourcing of accommodation for social housing through long-term lease arrangements and the introduction of an incremental purchase scheme through which lower income households can access home ownership.

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