Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

I want to read into the record of the House new information that comes from the Rebuilding Ireland social housing construction projects status reports for the first and second quarters of the year. They contain new information on the number of new local authority homes that were built in the first six months of this year. The total for the 31 local authorities throughout the State was 350. Reading through the list, I looked out for Cork city and saw that the total was zero. I also looked out for Cork county and saw that the total was one. My eyes were assaulted by the number of zeros on the page. The figures for Clare, Donegal, Kildare, Leitrim, Monaghan, Offaly, Roscommon, Sligo, Tipperary, Waterford and Wicklow were zero. Twelve of the 31 local authorities had no local authority build completions in the first half of this year.

We learned from yesterday's daft.iereport that rents nationally have increased by 11% year on year. The figure for Cork city is 14%. This shows that there is a need for local authorities to build houses. The Joint Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government was told today by representatives of the Economic and Social Research Institute and the Nevin Economic Research Institute that Brexit will create an upward pressure on rents, particularly in the big cities. They said that the Government would be wise to ramp up the construction of social and affordable houses. This is the reality of the position.

The motion before the House calls for the declaration of a housing emergency. I do not know how that could be debated at this stage. The Minister has taken 1,600 people off the official homelessness figures to try to keep the overall figure artificially below the 10,000 mark.

We could debate whether the figure is a bit below 10,000 or a bit above 11,000. Officially it should be the higher figure. There are a heap of people who are homeless or effectively homeless who are not included in the official figures over and above that number. Did the Minister of State know that rough sleepers are not counted in the official homelessness statistics?

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