Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

What does the Minister intend to do about the councils that are not reaching their targets? If there are targets, they should be reached. If the problems are in his Department as opposed to with the councils - which is what some of them would argue - we need to know. If the problems are with specific councils, we need to know that as well. Either way, we need to see social houses built because whatever he may say about acquisitions, leasing and so on, ultimately, what we need to see is more houses built through the public sector through using public land. The private sector will deliver a certain amount but, ultimately, what he can control is what is built on public land with public money.

Will the Minister be open, for example, to increasing the number of sites used for cost-rental? Will he be open to extending the number of public affordable and social houses that will be built on the land owned by the State as opposed to the private sector? That is what we have put forward in our proposals, namely, that we have a lot of public land and we should be building social and affordable housing on that public land as opposed to facilitating the private developers building on that land.

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