Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Adams knows that. The Government has responded in a number of ways as I have pointed out to the Deputy before, including by providing proper accommodation for people in units that were neglected, closed up or uninhabitable, significant numbers of which have been brought back into use and allocated to families. The social housing strategy for 2020 sets out clear and measurable targets to increase the supply of social housing to meet the housing needs of all householders on the social housing list. The intention and the objective is to deliver 110,000 units through current and capital funding streams between now and 2020 to 2021. In regard to putting together a strong house building programme, the Government has put €3 billion of taxpayers' money towards the social housing strategy out to 2021. In 2015, 13,000 units were delivered across all the social housing programmes, representing an 86% increase on the 7,000 units delivered in 2014. That is because of the total collapse of the construction sector over a number of years, of which Deputy Adams is very well aware. The target for this year is to deliver 17,000 units.

In the period 2011 to 2014, 26,000 new social housing units were delivered for families and people who needed them. The Deputy is aware of the housing assistance programme and the tenancy supplementary scheme, which has helped another 10,000 people to stay in the houses they have been in. The Government has sanctioned 400 additional local authority posts to help build capacity in order that local authorities can get back to building houses. In that sense, we have also introduced a new one-stage approval process for projects up to €2 million in value involving up to 15 new houses. Ordinarily, new housing construction projects go through a very extensive multi-stage approval process. This new opportunity allows for a much faster delivery between concept and construction. The Government has also worked closely with the representative bodies for the approved housing bodies sector, the Irish Council for Social Housing, the National Association of Building Co-Operatives, SHS oversight and so on. We have also approved the first bundle of public private partnership projects to deliver 500 units at six sites in the greater Dublin area. These are all elements of the challenge. There are quite a number of sites nationally at which work is going on at this very moment to deliver 926 social housing units, some of them in Deputy Adams's own constituency. I see from the list that most counties and areas are covered and construction is actually under way now. We need to get back to a point where local authorities use direct build methods to build these houses. The Government has provided them with the money, targets and facilities to get on and do that. I hope that will build up very strongly during the course of 2016.

See this speech in context