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

I thank the Deputies for those questions. It is important to note that while the Government supports subsidised housing schemes or affordable schemes, this does not mean that there are not affordable houses currently available in the market separate from those schemes. If we note the number of transactions in housing up to the end of October 2018, including first-hand and second-hand homes, there were 53,000 transactions. One in two of those transactions would have involved amounts of less than €250,000. Obviously, as we look more towards somewhere like Dublin, one in two of such transactions would have been for less than €320,000 - the median price. There are more challenges there and that is the reason we directed the first call at those local authorities in whose areas the affordability challenge is the greatest. There are targets in those first schemes that were approved and we are now working with the second tranche in order to get them in line in terms of providing those schemes and getting houses built. We are also looking at other ways of being able to deliver the serviced sites fund in a more truncated timeline than had previously been envisaged, even when we were having our discussions on the budget. Affordability is a key concern for everyone in the House. There is more that we have to do and we are constantly examining the position in order to see how we might improve matters.

I do not have the quarter 3 report in front of me. However, I recall thinking at the time that the way in which the material it contains was dealt with was funny and that perhaps it might have been misleading because what it seemed to imply was that construction in Dublin was down when this is simply not the case. Construction, planning permissions and completions are up. My understanding is that the reason matters looked like that in quarter 3 was because more completions had been done and therefore those active sites had closed. I put a caveat on that because I do no have the report in front of me, but it is true to say that when we look at construction in 2018 and when we have the final figures for quarter 4, we will see that it is up dramatically in every part of the country on what it was in 2018, particularly in Dublin. Planning permissions continue to increase as do commencement notices and completions. We like to use the new CSO completions data which I requested when I first came into office. We will have those figures. The Central Bank is estimating 19,000 completions for 2018. We believe the figure will be between 18,000 and 20,000. We will wait for those final figures and the number will be up again in 2019.

See this speech in context