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

The Deputy is absolutely correct in terms of that approach. Under Rebuilding Ireland, the Government has taken the view that the State needs to be directly involved in the building of houses. In the context of social housing units, the first priority was to get that stream under development. Then we want to see things like cost rental and we have the affordable schemes under way as well. At the same time, we are ensuring that construction is increasing throughout the country. There is no point talking about the price of a home if homes are not actually being built. That is why this year, the stock of social housing will increase by 10,000 homes, the majority of which will be directly built by local authorities either working with housing bodies or contracting directly with builders. Over 3,000 of these will be local authorities contracting with builders to build social housing homes on their own land or, when they do not have access to land but it is in the right area, to do turnkeys. By "turnkey", I refer to a process, where the land is there and we know we need social housing, even before planning has been granted, of engaging with a developer to build on that site. Some 10,000 new homes will come into the stock of social housing. When we have the data for 2018, we will see that between one in four and one in five homes that were newly built in that year will be social housing homes, as the Taoiseach pointed out earlier. That has not happened in this country for a very long time. It will continue this year and into next year.

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