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

I will slow down, but it is not our motion and we do not provide a copy in those circumstances. I understand that those are the rules of the House, but I can supply the Deputy with a copy.

During debates on housing over the two years, it is always said that it is an ideology issue with Fine Gael, or that we are against something. That is not the case. Every week the Minister and I have to say that it is not the case. We are committed to all forms of housing. There is a specific rental strategy; we are committed to cost rental, which is in the programme for Government, as Deputy Ryan pointed out. The Minister has worked very hard on cost rental and affordable projects. We keep saying we are very open to that and recognise that if we are to address the housing shortage, action must be across all forms of housing, including social, affordable, rental, private and purchase. There has to be a rental part of that. People choose to rent now. They want the choice it offers because of job commitments and so on. We are very much committed to that so I ask Deputy Ryan not to keep saying we are not. It does not help debate. It does not help us work together to find solutions.

We are not totally relying on the private sector. We recognise that we do have to rely on the private sector in the short term, as we develop our own social housing stock and develop plans for social and affordable housing. We have to work with the private sector and in some cases rely on it. However, we also recognise that through Rebuilding Ireland our duty is to bring back a sustainable construction sector. It is to tackle an emergency housing shortage and homelessness now, to get our local authorities back to building social housing and to bring the stock of houses back up. However, in the long term our duty is also to have a sustainable housing construction market. That is what Deputy Ryan's party wants and we want it too. Rebuilding Ireland commits to that for the first few years, while Project Ireland 2040 and the national planning framework set out the long-term vision of how to achieve it. Yes, these plans involve social housing and private housing, but they also address the way we manage our land and where we build houses for the future. Where do the next million people live? Where are the next 500,000 jobs going to be and the next 600,000 homes? We are trying to address those issues in a sustainable way. We are committed to those goals in the exact same way that Deputy Ryan is, so I call on him not to keep saying that Fine Gael is against something or that its members all think one way. We recognise that our job as a Government is to bring balance to housing across all the various sectors.

There is a lot of common ground between the thrust of the motion and the Government's objectives, actions and plans in the area of affordable housing and cost rental. In considering the overall objective, we can all agree that it must be to ensure that people can access affordable housing in every part of the country, in cities, villages, towns or rural areas. Deputy Ryan mentioned two Dublin sites, but as he said, this does not just concern Dublin. People have been critical when the Minister has referred to one or two cities. We recognise that housing has to be available throughout all of our cities and urban areas and we must make sure that people in rural Ireland can afford houses as well.

Cost rental is a commitment in A Programme for a Partnership Government and the Government is determined to make cost rental a major part of the housing system. We share that desire with Deputy Ryan and everybody else in this House. For that reason, we welcome the opportunity to set out what the Government has done and is doing: delivering social housing for those with the greatest affordability challenge, making the housing more viable and affordable generally and making affordable housing available to buy and rent. All of this is happening under our five-year €6 billion programme, Rebuilding Ireland. We have tabled an amendment which we will be supporting but there is a lot of common ground in both of the motion and the amendment.

When it comes to social housing, after the economic downturn we simply had to help those who had the greatest need and faced the greatest affordability challenge. Affordability of houses was not the only issue. In some cases, people could get houses. I have often referred to the fact that in many places, rent was half the price it is today only two and a half years ago. As such affordability was not the whole issue. The first priority was to get social housing stock back up and to put our local authorities and housing bodies back in the business of building houses. They have stopped doing so due to previous decisions, not just because of the downturn. Many people had fallen into negative equity. The Government was committed and made the decision, along with the relevant Oireachtas committee, that we would increase the stock of social housing by 50,000 homes by 2021.

Everyone keeps referring to the figure of 50,000 homes. We are all on the same page where that target is concerned. Other parties want to do more with affordable and cost rental and so do we. However, there was a commitment across the parties in this House to provide a minimum of 50,000 social houses. Taxpayers' money has been committed to doing that.

Those on the social housing waiting list can also avail of the housing assistance payment, the rental accommodation scheme and other targeted programmes. There is now a very strong plan to accommodate everyone on the social housing list. Some €6 billion in funding for this has been securely ring-fenced by the Government and beyond that money has been committed to make sure that we get back to delivering 10,000 or 11,000 houses per year. In the first ten years of Project Ireland 2040, money has been committed to increase that to 12,000 social houses a year. We are committing to that in the long term. I have no doubt that most people in this House would agree to that as a minimum and want to do more.

It is a fair commitment to have that money secured and it shows our commitment to dealing with the housing shortage across all the different sectors. Over the past 18 months, we have been ahead of target in many sectors. I emphasise, on behalf of the Minister, that while we are ahead of target, we accept it is not enough to deal with the current number of people who need a house. When we say we are making progress, we know it is not enough and that is why we want to constantly put more money into this to drive the agenda.

Over 25,000 households had their social housing needs met in 2017, an increase of 90% on the levels achieved in 2015. We are delivering social housing, although we also realise there are people who are not eligible for social housing and who struggle to afford to rent or buy a home. These people also need the support of the State. The Minister recognises this and made a very clear commitment upon his appointment last July that this is an area on which he wanted to focus.

Before we get into the type of supply we need, it is important to remember the challenge the Government faces in the context of Rebuilding Ireland relates to the residential construction sector. Housing construction had fallen by 90% and the Government had to take immediate remedial action to make residential construction viable again across all the various sectors. To achieve this, we introduced a dedicated €200 million infrastructure fund, provided access to development finance, for example, through the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund and now through Home Building Finance Ireland, which can provide competitive development loans for builders, and also introduced new departmental guidelines and streamlined planning. These actions and many others are rebuilding the residential construction sector. This is borne out by the data on residential construction commencements for the year to the end of January, which, at nearly 18,000, is up a 34%, or one third, increase on last year. We expect to see a minimum of 20,000 houses built this year across all the various forms of supply, and the sector itself estimates it might get about 23,000 houses, some 8,000 of which will be social houses, or perhaps even more when short-term rentals are taken into account. We are beginning to make the progress we need to bring back sustainable housing across the sector.

As we continue to address supply, we must ensure that the new homes are affordable and accessible. To achieve this, the help-to-buy scheme is a great help to many in securing a deposit, with almost 5,000 approvals in 2017. It has helped to drive up the supply of starter homes, as the reports show. As a Government, we are doing more to guarantee housing affordability. The Minister announced on 22 January that we are initially doing this in three main ways: an affordable rental scheme, with cross-rental: a Rebuilding Ireland home loan; and an affordable purchase scheme. The measures are generally targeted at households with low to moderate incomes, with a maximum of €50,000 for a single applicant or €75,000 for joint applicants. From the affordable rental and the affordable purchase schemes alone, we are targeting 3,000 houses in the first phase, with an ambition for over 10,000.

The Government is determined to make affordable or cost-rental a major part of the Irish housing system. Such housing will be-----

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