Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Will the Minister go through those "over 17,000" houses and explain to people what they are? These are not over 17,000 local authority homes; 10,000 of them are transfers to housing assistance payment, meaning it is a simple transfer from the rent allowance scheme to HAP, with people remaining with private landlords. There are 3,000 units leased from developers and landlords, with 1,000 being transfers to RAS. From the 17,100, only 1,500 are new local authority units, approved housing body units or acquisitions. That is less than 9%, which is completely inadequate and a fraction of what would have been built in the course of the 1980s on a yearly basis, where there would have been 7,000 or 8,000 homes built. We have 130,000 families on the housing waiting list; it is a massive housing crisis. Why is there still a reliance on the private market to resolve this problem, dressing it up and pretending there is local authority investment instead of State investment to build homes?

See this speech in context