Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am slightly bemused by the Deputy's comment. People across the Houses can criticise the social housing strategy if they so wish, but, by and large, the principles around it have been accepted as in terms of our going in the right direction. Considering the Deputy's philosophical background, I found her contribution quite strange.

The figures I have are those I have consistently given. They have been the same all the time. They show that there will be a huge push in 2015 towards meeting the needs of the volume of people concerned. The Deputy is not comparing apples with apples or oranges with oranges as regards previous spends. We are getting into the process of rebuilding social houses, council houses, the building of which should not have been stopped in the first place. There was a period of intense need to ramp that up. I am in the process of increasing the volume of local authority staff around the country in order to do that, which is necessary, and we are planning that in advance. The Deputy will be aware of the figures I gave for 2015 in terms of 7,400 units broken down in the way I outlined. As regards the breakdown of units by local authority, I would be happy to share those with the House post-announcement-----

See this speech in context