Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I appreciate the points the Deputies have made but we are under severe constraints with regard to the troika agreement and the amount of public money that can be spent at present. Therefore, we have to get the best possible value for money. While I would love to be do what Deputy Boyd Barrett has suggested and provide for the building of a large number of local authority houses - I hope we will do that again - we are not in a position to build them on the scale he mentioned. We have to use the various mechanisms available to address the needs of people in whatever way we can, whether it be acquiring units from NAMA, which we are doing, leasing arrangements and the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, with which the Deputies are familiar. There is also the method I discussed with Deputy Catherine Murphy, on foot of her priority question, around transferring rent supplement to the local authorities whereby we would have all of the long-term housing requirements under the one system. We are moving to reform measures in whatever way we can. We are using whatever available mechanisms we have to house people. When we restore the country to economic sovereignty and start to build up the economy again by all means we will return to much more substantial housing building than we have currently. The Deputy who said that there is beginning to be a shortage of accommodation in the Dublin area is right.

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