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

The Deputy asked about the 2018 output. At the moment, we have an indicative idea of returns from some local authorities. We are compiling those returns with a view to publishing them before the end of the month. I can give that commitment today. I expect we will see in those returns that some local authorities have exceeded their targets for the year across the different streams, and others have not done so. The reason I said at the housing summit in January of last year that I would commit to targets for each local authority was that I wanted full transparency on exactly what is happening. We know from the work we have done here in this Dáil that funding has been made available, the policy is there and the resources are there. Some local authorities have been very quick to ramp up their delivery of social housing, but others have not been as quick. In a couple of weeks, we will publish the outputs against the targets that were published last year. This will enable us to see exactly where each local authority is succeeding - for example, on the builds side. Some local authorities might be doing more leasing than other local authorities. We will be able to see where other local authorities are not as successful. I hope this type of transparency will enable us to help local authorities that are not doing as well to up their games and match those local authorities that are doing well, for example in the context of the increase in social housing we are now seeing.

I expect that because of the increase in social housing stock that happened over the course of 2018, we will find that fewer housing assistance payments were made in 2018 than in the previous year. Again, I will be able to verify that very shortly.

The Deputy's final question related to affordability schemes. It is important for those schemes to open in a time horizon that is significant to the actual houses that are being completed.

See this speech in context