Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The committee met nine times, on 12, 20 and 26 May, 2, 9, 15 and 30 June, 7 July and 28 September. The committee will meet as appropriate. If it is necessary for it to meet every week, it will do so. The State must deal with the issue. Due to the total collapse of the construction sector, the senior Minister with responsibility for housing and construction, Deputy Coveney, has produced the most comprehensive construction plan for housing ever produced by the State and backed by resources. We want to deal with the homeless and rough sleepers as a matter of urgency. They are symbols of the failure to deal with people on the streets who, in the vast majority of cases, should not be there. The Minister wants, by the middle of next year, to end the situation of having families in emergency hotel accommodation. It is an ambitious plan, but we intend to meet it.

Good progress has been made in implementing the plan. The HAP homeless pilot in Dublin has been extended. A Housing Agency rolling fund of €70 million has been established to purchase vacant properties from banks. The Minister will give all the details of this in a few minutes. There are plans to provide further family and child welfare support for homeless families. A housing delivery office has been established within the Department and a dedicated housing procurement unit has been established within the Housing Agency to assess vacant houses as they arise and make offers to buy them. New planning application process legislation has been published to expedite several priority reforms in planning and tenant protection. A call for proposals has been issued to access the €200 million local infrastructure housing activation fund, which should lead to approximately 11,000 to 15,000 extra houses being produced.

The latest data show that 4,248 adult individuals used State-funded emergency accommodation nationally during a week in August 2016. The August 2016 survey identified 1,151 families in emergency accommodation nationally, a 63% increase over the year. This included 2,363 dependents. I am setting out the scale of the challenge the Minister faces.

I will detail the key social housing actions. We will provide 47,000 social housing units delivered by 2021, supported by an investment of €5.35 billion. Some 26,000 of these units will be new builds. There is the accelerated housing assistance payment and the National Treasury Management Agency, NTMA, private sector housing fund to deliver increased housing supply, which is where the big focus is. There will be mixed tenure development on State lands and other lands, the housing delivery office has been established and there is extensive support for local authorities and approved housing bodies. I referred Deputy Danny Healy-Rae to it earlier. There are to be streamlined approval processes. The Minister is moving through the right of local authorities to expedite planning applications, and for major planning applications for more than 100 units they can go straight to An Bord Pleanála.

While 26,000 of the 47,000 social housing units will be new builds, 11,000 will be acquired by local authorities and approved housing bodies directly from the market or the Housing Agency, with a portion of these being newly built units. Some 10,000 will be leased by local authorities and approved housing bodies, which will include an estimated 5,000 units to be sourced from the NTMA special purpose vehicle, SPV. A further 5,000 units are to be secured from a combination of the repair and leasing initiative under long-term lease arrangements by local authorities and approved housing bodies from a range of different sources not including Part 5.

The Deputy asked how many vacant properties the €70 million Housing Agency fund has bought. Under the new acquisitions programme, it will use a rotating fund of €70 million. It is estimated that the mechanism will deliver 1,600 units over the period to 2020. Some 700 properties have been referred to the Housing Agency for potential acquisition and, as of 22 September, the agency has made a bid in respect of 96 of these, of which 49 have been accepted. These are in addition to the 171 properties the Housing Agency has acquired on behalf of local authorities from the two pillar banks under its existing acquisition programme.

It is a very extensive challenge. It is a massive programme and, in so far as the direction can be given through the Cabinet sub-committee, it will meet as necessary. The third quarter report will be published in the coming weeks and the Minister will supply the Deputy with all the details necessary.

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