Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am focusing on solutions; the Deputy is focusing on drama, as usual. Of course, I am conscious that 10,000 people will be in emergency accommodation tonight. I am not happy about that and the Government should not be either, but we will change it. We must focus, however, on where the problem is. Through the Rebuilding Ireland programme, we are delivering significantly more supply year on year, taking more individuals and families out of homelessness than ever before and putting them into tenancies and homes. What we have not done is overtake the number of families who are entering homelessness, which I accept, and we need to do more in that area, but it is also important to point out what we are doing and what is working. In truth, we are trying to fix a fundamentally broken housing market that collapsed during a property and banking crisis. We are trying to return to a point of building approximately 35,000 housing units of all types and we are getting there. Last year, just over 18,000 units were built and we added 8,400 social houses. On top of that, there is a heavy reliance on the housing assistance payment, which, while too great, is necessary in the short term while we increase the number of builds, bring voids back into use, put long-term leasing arrangements in place and so on. The figure exceeded 8,000 last year and will exceed 10,000 this year. Some 25,000 housing units, I hope, will be built this year and up to 30,000 next year. We are moving in the right direction on those metrics.

The rental market, too, was broken and we are fixing it, which is why the Government introduced rent pressure zones and limited rental inflation within those rent pressure zones. At the same time, however, we must ensure that there is investment and building to deliver supply. What many Deputies seem to suggest is that the State should simply do it all and build houses for virtually everybody. There is not the capacity to do that in the short term and the Deputy knows that. Money is not the issue; rather, it is a matter of capacity and pace of build. We need to empower and fund local authorities to build much more and then hold them to account on the targets we set for them and the targets they set for themselves. That is happening and the details are published on the website of the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government in order that people can see who is or is not performing. We need to remain on that journey of providing more supply and, through legislation, we need to do more to protect tenants and ensure that they will not find themselves homeless and unable to find alternative accommodation. The Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, will bring forward proposals in that regard next week. Some Deputies have made their own proposals but they do not stack up. It is important we do not agree to something we know may cause an even deeper problem in the medium term.

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