Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

What we are doing is dramatically increasing the number of social housing projects that local authorities are delivering and we are funding them. We have seen a dramatic increase in public funding for social housing through local authorities.

We are also funding projects that approved housing bodies are delivering and we are putting substantial funds into acquisition programmes. We are working to purchase properties that are derelict. However, there will not be one silver bullet that solves this problem, and certainly not one that is driven by an ideology that the State has to own everything. It will be a combination of all of those matters.

In the meantime, while we are delivering many more new housing units and bringing housing units that are vacant back into use, there is a reliance on the supported rental accommodation in the private sector to deal with the thousands of families that need State intervention. Over 25,000 social housing solutions were financially supported by the State last year. We want to change the emphasis in terms of that support to increasing the number of social houses that people can access, and we are doing so. When I became Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government a number of years ago, good foundations had been laid by the previous Minister and I built literally on the back of those. In 2016, fewer than 100 social houses were built by local authorities. Last year, over 2,000 were built. Next year, the number will probably double, and the year after, it will increase again significantly until we are up to figures for social housing delivery, between approved housing bodies and local authorities, of somewhere between 7,000 and 10,000. That is where we need to be.

To come in here and pretend that we can throw all this away and say, "Let us just build social housing", without the capacity to do that or the sites ready to go, or the processes in place that can deliver that immediately, is misleading and pretending that we have some kind of ideological objection to building social housing through local authorities which we do not have.

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