Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

As the Deputy is well aware, I announced delivery targets under the social housing strategy for all local authorities which took into account proposals submitted by the local authorities themselves for the delivery of units for the period 2015 to 2017. It is important to stress that every local authority, including the Deputy's local authority, had to put forward their own proposals. They were best positioned to evaluate what was necessary in Kildare, or in Dublin or elsewhere, so they put forward their own submissions. These new proposals are being assessed by my Department and I expect, as the Minister of State, Deputy Coffey, said, to make announcements very soon on projects to be advanced across the country and to be doing that continually for the rest of my time in this Department as projects are rolled out. I am fully committed to ensuring that this is done in the speediest fashion possible.

The scale of ambition represented in these targets and the accompanying funding allocations illustrate that housing is the highest priority for Government. Over €1.5 billion is to be invested in a combination of building, buying and leasing schemes which will, when completed, accommodate an average of 25% of those on local authority waiting lists. That varies depending on the scale of the lists across the local authorities.

Details of all social housing units acquired or developed by local authorities to date, including Kildare, are published on my Department’s website, as are quarterly and monthly reports on homelessness which are provided by housing authorities through the pathway accommodation and support system. Information on housing applications is captured in the statutory assessment of housing need, which was last carried out in 2013 and which indicated almost 90,000 households on local authority housing lists nationally. Under the reforms proposed in the social housing strategy, and I believe every Deputy will welcome this, it is my intention that housing needs assessments will be carried out on an annual basis because we need this information much quicker and rather than doing it on a biannual basis or every two or three years, we will be doing that every single year.

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