Michael Noonan (Limerick City, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his questions. When Deputy Jan O'Sullivan was Minister of State with responsibility for housing she made significant progress on this but everyone appreciates that problems emerge as an economy comes out of recession and they must be addressed. Ireland has quickly gone from having no housing market to having problems on the supply side. The supply side affects the availability of both private housing and social housing. There is a new Minister at the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly, and a new Minister of State, Deputy Paudie Coffey. They are working assiduously to develop plans to meet the need for social housing. Suggestions such as those made by the Deputy will be considered because we all know there is a problem.

The Deputy will recall that when his party was in Government policy changed from the direct provision of houses by construction by local authorities to the use of local authority housing budgets to purchase private houses in private housing estates. That is one way to address supply but there are other ways and they will all be considered in the context of the budget.

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