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

I must agree with all the Deputies that I want to spend more money on social housing but we could not do it over the past five years. It was cut significantly during the lifetime of the previous Government and we had to cut it because of the deal with the troika which said that our capital budget was cut every year. There was nothing I could do about that. We have turned the corner. I announced €58 million yesterday. The figure given by Deputy Ellis did not take account of the roll-over of money from one year to the next and the stimulus money announced in the budget which was then included in the capital programme. We have money to bring 500 void properties back into use. We are turning things around and will ramp up as soon as we can. I agree with Deputy Wallace that we want to see more investment generally across the sector. This is why the Government has been doing work on the construction sector and will be putting forward policy proposals. Quite a lot of research is being done by a variety of bodies like the ESRI and the PRTB on the area of supply and we will use all that information to improve the situation because we have turned a corner.

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