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

I thank the Deputy for those questions. Deputy Feighan is welcome back to the Dáil Chamber. I am sure he does not miss the Seanad - I will withdraw that remark in case it is misinterpreted.

Deputy Feighan asked about local authority housing. Not all home activity is on site at the moment. At the end of the year some 6,500 houses were active on sites throughout the country. We have approximately 1,000 now under construction. These opened up just a couple of weeks ago and are near completion. That is only a proportion. We opted for those sites that, through a little work, could get completed and those we could get tenanted quickly. We hope from 18 May to be able to get the other sites back up-and-running as long as we can do so in a safe way.

Acquisitions are still proceeding. That is an important part of the programme. In many parts of the country the local authority might be able to buy a house for social housing that might not otherwise have been bought. It might have been derelict or unoccupied. It is one of the ways in which we try to use every stream available to increase the basic stock of social housing in this time of crisis.

The majority of social housing we have comes from new builds. Let us consider the breakdown of who is providing new builds. Local authorities do more than housing bodies, although they do a good deal as well and that is important to note. They do far more than the housing coming in under Part V.

House prices were falling. There was double digit growth when I took over as Minister. Prices were then falling towards the end of last year, dramatically enough in some parts of Dublin where they had been rather high. It is not yet clear what the impact will be on the housing market. We are seeing different things at the moment. One thing that might impact on the market is the extent to which we think we can get sites open. This may enable us to continue on the positive track we are on in terms of the increased delivery we are seeing every quarter of every year. There are big jumps in the number of new homes being built from what was a low base only a short number of years ago. We still need a little more information and data before we can start to make informed guesses about where house prices might go.

The CSO compiles the official figures, and they act as a guide to what might happen in the future.

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