Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his question. As he rightly said, under the Housing for All strategy, we confirm both the need and the intention to increase the supply, on average, to about 33,000 units per year. The strategy is, however, clearly based on increasing new supply across social, affordable and private housing from State-owned and private land. Our policy is to bring forward delivery in the shorter term by enabling supply that would not otherwise have been built. It is not about hoovering up things that have already been built but about enabling new supply. We are targeting the additional supply from unactivated sites, which otherwise may not have progressed. That ensures that we will not be competing with private purchasers for the limited, but thankfully increasing, supply that is currently on the market. We will instead increase supply across the board. That is our absolute focus.

The Housing for All policy is backed by an historically-high level of investment of €20 billion over five years, or €4 billion plus per annum. We have set a target in that period to deliver 47,600 new-build social homes over the next five years, as well as providing nearly 29,000 affordable purchase and cost rental homes. As part of a much wider range of measures to achieve these objectives, including the development of a strong new-build pipeline from local authorities, several initiatives to ensure the delivery of affordable homes in the near term have been developed by me and my colleagues. These are targeted at bringing forward houses that would not have been built yet and at activating uncommenced planning permissions, thereby bringing forward new supply in the areas where the need for affordable housing is most acute. My Department and delivery partners constantly carry out monitoring to ensure that value for money is also achieved. Supported by this strategy, indications of increased construction activity are becoming evident. Some 30,724 residential units commenced in 2021, and that is a year-on-year increase of 42%. This overall increase in the supply, together with the measures in the Housing for All policy, is key to ensuring that home ownership is supported for both affordable and private purchase.

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