Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not know why Deputy Ó Broin wishes to misrepresent the progress that is being made when it comes to building social housing homes. He is not comparing like with like. He includes things such as voids when he wants to and then excludes them when he wants. This gives a very unfair impression of what is actually happening. Of course, we are building more units this year. We spent everything in our capital and current budgets last year. We were doing so much that I had to get additional money from the Minister for Finance to build more homes and that is what happened. This year, we again have a dramatic increase in our capital budget that will build more homes - real homes coming into the social housing stock. These are homes built by local authorities and approved housing bodies and homes delivered through the Part V arrangement.

We will also acquire homes. That figure is down. Again, the Deputy looked for it last year and I agreed that we should be acquiring less and building more so we are doing that. When we do that, the Deputy says our acquisitions target is down. Of course it is down. That is the case because we are building more. The number of voids is also down because we have managed to achieve a huge amount in terms of taking vacant, sometimes derelict, social housing units and bringing them back into use. As we do more of that, fewer voids will be brought back into use. However, even when one takes the total sum of what we hope to achieve this year, it is up on last year in terms of real social housing units for people to live in.

We still rely on the housing assistance payment and the rental accommodation scheme because we have not yet built enough social housing units for people on the housing list but as we move to 2020 and 2021 under Rebuilding Ireland, more people will be accommodated in new homes coming into the social housing stock than will be accommodated in the private rental sector. Our ambition does not end at the end of Rebuilding Ireland. It follows through into Project Ireland 2040 out to 2027. Between now and that date, at least 112,000 homes will be built. These are social housing units for the social housing stock.

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