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

I am personally involved in trying to solve homelessness in Ireland and trying to fix a very broken housing market. I work with my colleague, the Minister, Deputy Murphy, who is continuing the work in this regard. The numbers published yesterday of course are of real concern to us. On the need for new policy responses, as we have seen with the Rebuilding Ireland policy to date, new policy responses happen all of the time. It is important not to leave anybody with an impression that the Government is not committed to doing a huge amount to respond to homelessness and family homelessness in particular. Last year, approximately 4,700 people were taken out of homelessness through giving them tenancies. Last year, there were approximately 26,000 social housing solutions, which was an increase of approximately 93% or more on the previous year. In fact, it was an increase of 123% on the year before.

In terms of talking to the people working in the sector and trying to deal with social housing demand and the homelessness challenges the Government needs to overcome, everybody, including those in the House will say the answer is more social housing. This is what we are delivering but it takes time to do this. We will deliver an extra 50,000 social housing units between now and 2021. We have put enough capital in place to deliver an extra 100,000 social housing units over the next ten years. The problem is we are starting from a flat position of delivering virtually none up to two years ago. It takes time to deliver the scale of social housing needed to solve comprehensively a homelessness problem and social housing demand. In the meantime, multiple solutions are being put in place, including homeless housing assistance payment, housing assistance payment, leasing arrangements and family hubs, which are temporary solutions but are better solutions than creating homes for families in hotel rooms, which is something the Government is committed to moving away from. On this issue we still have a significant job to do and the numbers published yesterday remind us of this.

In relation to the comments made on the Rebuilding Ireland home loan, with respect, this is a new initiative involving a €200 million fund to create 1,000 new home loans for people who otherwise would not be able to qualify in the normal banking system. It was only launched in February, so the accusations made by the Deputy and the suggestions he is making simply do not hold water. We do not have the statistics and evidence to back up any of this yet.

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