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

The Government has been in place only less than a year. We have had a new housing and homelessness strategy in place since last summer, only approximately seven months ago. Since then, we have committed nearly €5.5 billion to providing a very significantly increased number of social houses. We will build approximately 26,000 of the 47,000 that will be coming in. We will provide the others through acquisition and long-term leasing arrangements. There is nothing bogus. There is no fantasy. There will be a dramatic increase in the amount of social housing that will be provided through building, long-term leases, bringing voids back into use and acquisitions. Last year alone we spent €203 million buying more than 1,000 properties that were largely vacant to bring them back into social housing use. We launched the numbers, and the Deputy should look at where they are going to be built and the timelines for them. A total of 8,430 social houses to be constructed are at various stages in the pipeline.

I share the Deputy's frustration. We need to increase dramatically the number of social houses available to local authorities to house people on housing lists and get families out of emergency accommodation in hotels and individual rough sleepers into Housing First models with the supports they need. It cannot happen overnight, and most people understand this. There is a sense of urgency in my Department and in most local authorities to ramp up capacity significantly and to get building, and it is happening. We have increased the funding for housing by 50% from last year to this year and all the money will be spent on construction, acquisition, bringing voids back into use and strategically using publicly owned landbanks in a much more proactive and aggressive way to get more social houses into the system. That is what I am responsible for and it is happening.

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