Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising a very important issue, one on which I share his thoughts. He knows that as a humble Cork man, I have always been a great admirer of the literary creativity and innovative character of Kerry people. I have been in awe of the genius of the Kerry DNA for a long time, as a neighbour across the county bounds.

The Government has a target of 255 direct builds in County Kerry and 70 leases for 2021. If the Deputy can go back to Kerry County Council and it can do more, I will talk to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage who really wants local authorities to come back to him saying they can do more. The more shovel-ready projects on housing there are, the more responsive the Government will be in getting them done.

The Deputy is right; the housing lists are too long. Too many people are waiting too long for social and private housing. It is a crisis that has been compounded by Covid, meaning that for the moment construction has slowed down considerably. There is a big budget this year for housing. We will be responsive to what the Deputy has just said regarding the capacity of the council to do more than the targets. It is a target at the moment; the council allocation is not a capped at 255. Last year the Minister cut through a significant amount of red tape by introducing a single-stage process with up to €6 million which will help accelerate delivery. It means that the local authority can devise projects up to that scale without needing to get sanction from the Department at every stage.

Kerry County Council may have more capacity in terms of voids. Last year the Minister allocated €56.4 million to bring 3,607 vacant homes back into productive use across the country within the social housing stock. That was the highest ever yearly spend on voids and the highest number of homes to be refurbished under the voids programme. It was done under the July stimulus programme. Kerry County Council got approximately €991,000 under that voids programme. That enabled the refurbishment of about 50 extra social housing units for the purpose of re-letting them out to individuals and families on the list. We expect similar measures this year on voids across the country, including in Kerry. Again, the Deputy could alert his local authority to that allocation. We need to make up lost ground now because of Covid-19 which was unavoidable.

I appreciate the prioritisation the Deputy is giving to this issue. We are open to any innovative schemes. For example, I note that in some instances, houses are falling by the wayside for various reasons. I do not understand why we cannot sometimes intervene to acquire a house and refurbish it. It might have been idle for a year or two and getting into disrepair. We have all passed them on boreens and roads throughout the countryside and they would make fine homes for people. We are very much open to respond to initiatives from the local authority.

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