Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I disagree with that. AHBs are partners in the delivery of social housing. We are very clear on this. The target is over 50,000 social houses built on behalf of the State in the years ahead. Local authorities will account for the majority of those house while AHBs will account for about 17,000 in total across all the various schemes. They have about 5,000 units coming through the pipeline on 300 sites but over 720 sites are being planned that will deliver over 12,000 houses by local authorities.

I agree with Deputy Cowen that we want the local authorities to do more in this space. We have asked them to do so and their capacity has been strengthened in terms of resources, people, and finance. We have also put in place a new delivery team and agreed a new timeline of 59 weeks to be on-site with the housing, which is also in line with the private sector. This puts the local authorities in the position of being able to deliver the quantities of housing that they used to many years ago. Deputy Cowen is asking what happens if EUROSTAT makes a decision. The local authorities have been asked to increase their capacity every year over the next number of years. We will, then, be in a position to deliver our targets; that is not a concern for us. If the local authorities decide to operate either on- or off-balance sheet then we can deal with that. Capacity is being put back into the system to deliver housing. There will be an issue with funding and with the administration of balance sheets but we can deal with that. We will wait for the decision in the years ahead.

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