Paudie Coffey (Waterford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

In April, we set social housing targets for each local authority out to 2017, along with provisional funding allocations, which will see an investment totalling €1.5 billion to meet an ambitious delivery target of some 22,900 social housing units. The investment will be in a combination of building, buying and leasing schemes designed to accommodate more than 25% of those currently on local authority housing waiting lists. In line with those targets, the Minister and I kick-started a major social housing construction programme as part of announcements of new local authority and approved housing body projects in May and July of this year. These projects will see the delivery of more than 2,900 new housing units at a value of almost €0.5 billion, covering all 31 local authorities. We expect to be in a position to announce further approvals in the coming weeks.

Given the time lag between approval and delivery of construction projects, as we have discussed, the acquisition by local authorities of properties through turn-key developments and other purchases, as well as the remediation of vacant units or voids, are important components of social housing delivery this year. In 2014, we turned around more than 2,000 voids. The target for this year was 1,000, and we expect to exceed that substantially. We have called on local authorities to come forward with their voids programmes, for which they will receive the necessary funding. I cannot make it any clearer than that.

Provisional data, largely to the end of the third quarter of 2015, indicate that a total of 1,411 units have been delivered through my Department's capital programmes, including build schemes and acquisitions and through returning voids to productive use. A further 6,213 units have been delivered under the current expenditure programmes, namely, the social housing leasing initiative, the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, and the housing assistance payment, HAP, scheme.

Notwithstanding the pressures in accessing accommodation in the private market for social housing purposes, I am confident, on the basis of the progress already made and given the extent to which delivery is traditionally heavily concentrated in the latter part of the year, that the overall target of delivering some 15,900 units this year will be largely achieved. That figure includes the capital and current projects to which we have referred today.

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