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

From a policy perspective, we would prefer not to rely so much on housing assistance payment. However, previous Governments outsourced responsibility for social housing building to the private sector almost exclusively, when that sector collapsed with the financial crisis there was no one there to build houses so we had to get back into the business of building social housing.

Under Rebuilding Ireland, 50,000 new homes will be added to the social housing stock. However, until 2020 and 2021, there will be more people housed through HAP than in social housing. In those last two years of Rebuilding Ireland, we will place more people from the social housing list into new homes in the social housing stock.

The number of units by direct build by local authorities and approved housing bodies was about 2,400 and will be about double that number this year, including some of the units built under Part V provisions. This is not like 20 or 30 years ago. There are several different delivery streams of social housing, including the approved housing body sector, local authorities, long-term leasing and acquisition. All those measures together, as well as the opening of voids this year, will bring almost 8,000 new homes into the social housing stock. The rest of the people on the list who we need to help will have to rely on the housing assistance payment. Last year we helped around 26,000 new tenancies, both families and individuals, through taxpayer-supported social housing supports. That was 23% more than we had intended. Rebuilding Ireland is working. We are ahead of our targets. However, as the Taoiseach pointed out earlier, there is a lot more work to do.

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