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

I will try to follow Deputy Coppinger by staying within the specified time. The Deputy and I have debated this issue previously. I think we need to take multiple approaches to the provision of social housing. In addition to developing classic social housing projects on public land and actively pursuing Part V, we should use public land more strategically to drive a new approach involving a mixture of social and private housing in mixed-tenure projects and to get more social housing built more quickly. We have already spent quite some time today talking about all the projects we are trying to push on. Almost 8,500 social housing units are at various stages in the pipeline for delivery and construction. We need to use the capacity of the private sector to deliver social housing, affordable units and private housing, often on the same sites. We can do that effectively by strategically using publicly owned landbanks. Nobody is talking about selling off private landbanks or gifting them to people.

See this speech in context