Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

As I said in my initial reply, I will review and consider the matter the Deputy has raised. I will look at the differential rents under the national framework later this year. The housing bodies are playing a crucial role at the moment. They will continue to do so as we look to develop and supply more social housing to people in this country. We are seeking to provide 47,000 new social housing homes over the course of the Rebuilding Ireland plan. A big piece of work is going to come into the Dáil in September. It relates to the regulation of housing bodies. It will be a very important piece of work. Over 300 housing bodies are dealing with these issues in this State at the moment. We need to find ways of making sure there is a consistency of approach between housing bodies. We need to leverage those bodies to their maximum potential in terms of financing solutions. We need to increase the scale of what those bodies are doing. That will potentially require amalgamations. We will have to see about that. It might require overseas housing bodies that have greater experience of doing this on a bigger scale to come in. There is huge potential here. The most important thing is to get the regulation in place and onto a statutory footing. That will open up avenues for the financing needed to help us to do everything else we want to achieve.

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