Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Government's objectives on housing are threefold. First, it aims to reduce the number of people who are homeless. I am encouraged by the reduction in the number of rough sleepers over the Christmas period and into January and the fall in the number of families in emergency accommodation in January as a consequence of Government actions. However, one fall is not a trend, so I do not want to make too much of that although it is encouraging that those two things have been recorded and recognised.

The second objective is to provide more social housing in order to reduce the housing list. I am encouraged that the number of houses being built by local authorities and approved housing bodies is increasing, from fewer than 700 in 2016 to more than 2,000 in 2017. It will be closer to 4,000 this year. If we could ramp things up quicker we would, but it takes time to ramp up construction in the public and the private sector given the lost decade we have had.

One of our very important objectives is to recognise the fact that the vast majority of people provide their own housing. They save, get a mortgage and buy their house. This is what they want. They want to be able to buy and own their own home. We have to assist people to do that. This involves a number of things such as putting in place actions that will help the private sector and builders to start building again. We do not have a perfect measure of the number of houses that are built in the State in any given year but it appears to have been between 15,000 and 20,000 last year. This also shows an increase in construction. The fact is that we can see this construction all around us, be it cranes or housing estates in our constituencies. We anticipate new home construction rising to between 20,000 and 25,000 this year, getting to the point where things stop getting worse, as it were, and perhaps getting better again the year after.

As well as building houses, people need to be able to get mortgages and this is why the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, brought the proposals forward yesterday. It is for people who have not been able to get a mortgage from the bank so they can go to their local authority and secure a low-interest loan with a guaranteed interest rate for 30 years, which I believe is a positive offer. I am aware there were a huge number of calls being made to the authorities about the Rebuilding Ireland loan and extra staff have been taken on because of the number of people contacting the helpline and accessing the Rebuilding Ireland loan website.

With regard to the setting up of new agencies, I believe that the establishment of a new agency is often the default solution to every problem in Ireland. It does not always work. It is not something we would rule out but we must be realistic about it. It takes nearly 12 months to set up a new government agency and that is what one spends one's time doing during that period, not building houses. This new agency would presumably still have to contract out to the private sector. Unless it is taking on builders, carpenters, plumbers and so on, an agency such as that would have to contract and do procurement so even after a 12 month set-up period, it would only then be starting on the process of issuing tenders.

I would also be very cautious of doing anything that takes the pressure off local authorities. We are putting councils and local authorities under enormous pressure to start building again. Some of them are doing better than others and it concerns me when I hear the Opposition suggesting that in some way responsibility might be taken away from the local authorities and handed over to an agency. There would be some councils or local authorities who would not mind getting out of this entirely and if they thought that another party was going to come along and relieve them of this burden and obligation, it would not be helpful.

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