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

I thank Deputy Joan Collins for raising the issue and am glad that the particular family's situation has been resolved, with DCC now facilitating the purchase of the house. I think the Deputy said there were two children with special needs in the house.

Commonsense and flexibility should always apply in situations like this. Councils have flexibility.

The target this year is for 12,000 social homes, of which 9,000 are to be direct build, between approved social housing bodies and local authorities. I can recall a year ago or longer that people were saying local authorities were not building enough social housing. I said it myself when I was in opposition. We want local authorities building houses as the core activity in housing provision along with approved social housing bodies. I am talking here in the context of social housing. We do not want acquisition to be the alternative to local authorities building their own homes and getting houses built. That is the point.

From a policy orientation point of view, the clear message to local authorities has to be that their route to social housing provision is primarily through construction, either by the local authority or the approved social housing body. In certain circumstances, there can be acquisitions. In the phasing out of the leasing situation, which has been ongoing for some time and helps in respect of homelessness and the immediate issues the Deputy just raised, there has to be flexibility when situations present themselves to councils in respect of particular families or sets of circumstances so that the councils can respond flexibly. That flexibility has to be there.

In addition, €4 billion of State funding will be provided for housing, both social affordable and cost rental, per annum for the duration of the plan. In addition to that, an estimated €10 billion is required for private house developments that will be needed. We need private sector investment in addition to the public investment to get to the 33,000 completions a year that we want.

The Deputy, in her presentation, omitted the reality of the pandemic and its impact on housebuilding. She said the targets were not met in 2020. That is obvious because of the prolonged lockdown that year. The same happened in 2021 when there was a prolonged lockdown, unfortunately, because of the Alpha variant. That went on for three to four months. That impacted on public sector housebuilding outputs and in terms of private sector housebuilding. Housebuilding made a good recovery in the latter half of the year. There were 31,000 commencements in 2021 and about 38,000 planning permissions were granted. The pipeline is getting much better. It is not a mess at all and we have clear visibility now in terms of the social housing pipeline and private housing.

The Land Development Agency, LDA, has been established on a statutory basis. It has a number of projects ready to go. It has also developed Project Tosaigh which works with developers on projects that had been lying dormant even though they had planning permission. The LDA is there to activate those to get houses built fast so that the people who need housing can get it.

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