Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We can see that local authorities are not building houses at the rate one would hope. In quarter 2 of 2017, 76% of completions were by approved housing bodies. Of the sites started at that time, 63% were by approved housing bodies. There appears to be an over-reliance on approved housing bodies. I know the question has been put to EUROSTAT, which is investigating the fact that these bodies and the funding associated with them are off-balance sheet. If that is proven to be the case, what provision have local authorities made to ramp up the provision of local authority housing by local authorities themselves? Looking at the statistics it appears to be Government policy to predominantly allow approved housing bodies to be the ones building homes currently rather than local authorities.

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