Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Part V review, carried out by the housing agency at my Department’s request, has been completed and will be submitted to Government in the coming weeks - obviously, it has to go through there first. It is anticipated that any legislative changes required on foot of the review, subject to Government approval, will be incorporated into the general scheme of a new planning Bill, to which I have referred a number of times here today and which is expected to be published shortly.

As the extent of social housing gain from Part V is directly related to private housing construction, the current situation is that there is very limited Part V delivery in terms of social housing, and we all know that. I am committed to the principle of a social housing gain from private development - let me be quite clear about that - but to maximise that gain we need a properly functioning and sustainable construction sector, hence the Construction 2020 strategy. I believe that the Part V mechanism has the potential to again be a significant contributor to social housing in the context of a recovering housing market.

The Government’s Construction 2020 strategy, published in May this year, aims to build a competitive, innovative and sustainable construction sector. My intention is that the social housing strategy, which will be published in the coming weeks, required under action 8 of Construction 2020 and now in preparation, will be both challenging and innovative, and will provide the basis for an enhanced approach to social housing provision in Ireland. I expect that the strategy will be considered by Government in the coming weeks and the Part V mechanism will be considered also in the very near future and subsequent to that obviously it will be published.

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