Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am not sure if Deputy Wallace has ever engaged with people who are looking for social housing but they want it close to where they are now. I did not comment on the suitability or otherwise of the NAMA offerings that were made to local authorities.

I know from engagement that when people look for a social house, they want it to be close to where they are now, given their family connections or whatever else. The Government set out to address a deplorable situation and the first measure was to reconstruct buildings in which people could not live to make them habitable. Some 2,000 such buildings have now been dealt with.

The second measure was to deal with an emergency where rents were being increased by landlords and people were being forced out. A tenancy arrangement was introduced and is helping 5,800 families. The housing assistance programme, in circumstances where people going back to work were losing all of their benefits, was changed such that it now tapers off. A total of 6,000 families have been involved in it. Some 2,000 families were taken off housing lists last year.

In 2013 there were 89,872 households on the social housing assessment list. The majority, 46,500, were found to be dependent on rent supplement. The results speak for themselves. The list contained more than 2,000 duplicates from one year to the other, and perhaps multiple applications. It is not as easy as the Deputy might think to say to someone living Dublin, Ballinasloe or Athlone, "I have a social house for you, but it is in Drogheda."

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