Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue which is undoubtedly one of the major challenges that we face as a country. Having been through the crisis that we experienced, we know for a fact that it was the phoney boom in property and housing that brought that crisis upon us. It is not entirely surprising, therefore, that the most difficult sector to fix is the one that dragged us down, namely, the housing sector. I reject the Deputy's suggestion that the Government is not serious about this issue. The Government is committed to getting housing supply back on track. The Deputy rightly points to social housing as an area which was neglected by his own party in Government and subsequently. The situation in respect of social housing is that in 2016, only 650 social homes were built but in 2017, that number more than trebled to 2,245 units. There is a strong social housing pipeline in place, with 190 sites open and almost 4,000 units under construction. There is a real, sustainable change in the social housing programme. It is the Government's intention that 33,000 social homes will be built. Last year a total of 7,000 new social homes were made available through acquisitions, the restoration of voids and new leases. That was substantially ahead of what was achieved in 2016, which was just over 5,000 social housing units. Real and sustainable progress is being made.

In respect of creating a more affordable market, the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, announced in the budget a series of measures designed to support the private sector in getting to grips with building. These measures include using the experience and ability of NAMA and providing an additional fund of €750 million. In addition, there have been interventions to help individual families to get a deposit together so that young families can start to access homes. Indications from recent figures are that we are seeing, at last, more young starter families getting access to new homes and that is a positive development.

I would be the last to suggest that this problem is solved. However, I recall that when I was seeking to address the unemployment issue, we set the target of 100,000 jobs and many said that it was not realistic and that we were not making progress quickly enough. We put in place a systematic plan containing a lot of different measures that changed the performance and we see the positive consequences of that, with fantastic employment numbers in the country now. I believe that the measures being put in place will solve this problem but we must be absolutely committed to getting quicker responses not only at national level but also at local government level. Each and every local authority has a responsibility to deliver on this programme.

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