Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

A total of €2 billion of this funding is being assigned to support the delivery of social housing. I am confident of those figures and have no doubt about them. I understand where there might be confusion, but the figure is right. It is new money. It is taxpayers' money. It is not my money or the Government's money but taxpayers' money being invested in a key way. The €200 million for the Local Infrastructure Housing Activation Fund is an important part of opening up sites for social housing but also for private housing. It is about getting the market moving and achieving delivery. This reflects a clear demonstration on the part of the Government of the high priority that it assigns on behalf of us all because the message is clear from everybody that we must spend money in regard to housing. I have no problem going through the figures at a later stage in committee because I have no doubt about them.

With regard to building more homes, when the housing market is working well, there is a good supply of a range of new and second-hand homes for purchase, which cater for the entire span of the market from starter homes upwards. Currently, we are producing half the 25,000 houses a year we need. Half of those are one-off rural houses so they are not where we need them in our main cities of Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway. In fairness, having worked with the Members and Senators and having met councillors I am aware there is a housing problem in all our towns and villages. It is prominent in our cities but it is evident now in all areas where people are waiting on homes.

Similarly, due to this shortage of new homes, the second-hand market is half what would normally be seen. The key graph on output is on page 30 of the plan if people want to analyse it. It shows output predictions with the various elements of the plan implemented versus "business as usual" without these measures. We believe that with the intervention in the plan we can double that figure up to 25,000 houses by 2019 and, I hope, increase it to 28,000 or 30,000 by 2021. There is no reason it cannot go even further if everybody here works on that because when Government intervenes and commits to actions and backs that up with money and a delivery unit the markets will react because we cannot beat competition. If we say we will build houses under a State plan-----

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