Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do. At the moment social housing makes up between 7% and 8% of total housing stock. I think the average in Europe is between 17% and 18%. We need to significantly increase our social housing stock and that is why we are proposing to increase it by nearly 50,000 over the next five years, increasing social housing stock as a percentage of the total by nearly 30%. I am absolutely committed to that because the State's intervention in housing needs to be balanced. We need to intervene around affordable housing and, in particular, around social housing. We need to ensure we build housing in the right places, achieve integration and mixed tenure, as well as decent homes for people in vibrant communities. I have an agreement in Cabinet to spend €5.3 billion doing that, which is a pretty significant commitment.

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