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

I thank the Deputy for that question. She is absolutely right regarding what I can control. That is why I wanted to bring transparency in terms of what local authorities are doing when it comes to social housing delivery. We secure funding and put the policy in place and then the local authorities are given the resources. Ultimately, it is the local authorities that are responsible for delivery. We work with them in order to facilitate this. By having targets for each local authority area across the different streams and then publishing the actual output against that, we can see what they have done.

We have held a number of housing summits. On this occasion, the summit will be a little different. It will be held on two separate half days. Those who are performing very strongly will attend on one of the days and those who are not performing as strongly will attend on the other. The authorities that are not performing as well as others face different challenges and needs in terms of what must be worked through. By using mechanisms such as those to which I refer, we can work with local authorities to overcome some of the kinks that might still exist in certain areas.

The data for the third quarter show that it was up by 80% on the third quarter of 2017. They are increasing the number of social housing homes being built and I expect them to continue with a great drive throughout 2019, as I expect them to have done in the final quarter of 2018. I want cost rental to be a major component of our rental market. It cannot be put in place overnight but we are working on a project on St. Michael's Estate and will talk with the European Investment Bank, EIB, again in December about funding for this. I met LDA officials in their offices to talk about how I think some of those key sites which are close to the core urban centres could be appropriate for cost rental. Public land for public housing is at the core of our policies.

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