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

That is changing. The Government does not have an ideological attachment to a reliance on the private sector to solve social housing need. Quite the opposite is the case. It has committed tens of millions of euro to roll out one of the most ambitious social housing building programmes the State has ever seen. That is happening. It takes time to build houses and, in the meantime, we must rely on HAP and RAS because there are properties available in which families can be accommodated. We are also looking to switch people from rent allowance to HAP because it is a more secure form of tenancy.

It takes time to build the number of houses we need to solve the problems in Galway, Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford and elsewhere. There is a dramatic increase in the number of social houses being delivered and the number of private houses, many of them affordable, that are being delivered as well. The Government is trying to deliver mixed tenure communities with many extra social houses. In the next few years, 50,000 houses will be provided under the Rebuilding Ireland scheme, which will then go on to provide more than 100,000 houses. That needs to be accelerated, particularly in pressure points like Galway.

See this speech in context