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

It is good to hear some practical proposals but many of the proposals the Government has put into practice are working. Independent reporting, such as the Goodbody report published in recent days, has revised the forecast and indicated there will be between 21,000 and 22,000 new builds this year. Added to that, the number of vacant properties and derelict stock that will come back into use means approximately 25,000 new properties will come onto the market for use this year. That is very much in line with where we said we needed to be in the Rebuilding Ireland plan. We will push on now beyond that and get up to well over 30,000 in the coming years. In the number of planning permissions, which is a real indication of the appetite to build new properties and get them done, there have been significant increases. The number of commencement notices has increased by 41% as of April. That is a steady increase and acceleration of where we have been in recent years.

The core problem, as the Deputy recognised, is supply. One of the reasons we have such reliance on the private rental market for social housing solutions is supply, which is why we are building significantly more social housing than has been done for many years. We will continue to do that and will add approximately 10,000 social housing units to the stock this year. The core issue we need to resolve, which, to be fair to the Deputy, he raises all the time, is the delivery of supply in multiple sectors, namely, social housing, affordable housing, affordable rent, cost-rental models and a more conventional purchase market, for both apartments and family homes. All those things are progressing. The figure on the housing lists is now 70,000, which is down 20,000 because it was at 90,000 for some time. Since Rebuilding Ireland was started, the output of new homes that have been delivered and are available to the market and families is 52,000. There have been 42,000 new builds, 7,000 properties were vacant and are now filled, while 3,000 unfinished properties that were in ghost housing estates are now completed and have families in them.

That is progress. It is not yet fully where we need to be but it is significant progress. If we continue to make the kind of progress we have made, in accelerating output of supply, many of the other issues the Deputy understandably raises, such as the pressures that individuals and families are under, will be solved. If there is focus not on the delivery of supply but instead on freezing rents overnight, if landlords are driven out of the market because certainty is not given through allowing for modest inflation and so on in the marketplaces, we will not receive the kind of investment we need.

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