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

I have said consistently in the House that housing is the single most important social and economic issue facing us as a country at this moment in time. Access to housing is fundamental to people's sense of well-being, security, stability and health, and for us as a broader society in terms of our progress as a nation. That is why we have, on a whole-of-government approach, developed the Housing for All strategy, with significant resources put at the disposal of that strategy, namely €4 billion a year every year over the next five years and beyond.

I am in no doubt as to the scale of the challenge and the need to, at a minimum, get to 33,000 or 34,000 houses built per annum in this country. That will take a variety of forms, from social housing to private housing, affordable housing, cost rental and the HAP initiative. We are building more social housing now and reducing, over time, dependency on HAP. For the time being, given the scale of the HAP provision over the past decade, it will be necessary to enable people to access social housing.

The decisions we have taken represent watershed interventions in the housing market. Covid impacted us over the past two years, with the two lockdowns in 2020 and 2021. On the positive side, the number of new builds commenced in 2021 was 31,000, the highest figure since 2008. Approximately 20,000 houses were completed in 2021, notwithstanding the lockdown. That is not enough. Until we get an adequate supply of houses, we will not be able to deal with all of the manifestations of the housing crisis in all their forms.

Approximately 40,000 planning permissions were granted in the year to quarter 3 of 2021. The challenge for 2022 is to maintain that momentum. Inflation has proved to be problematic. As we discussed earlier, the massive increases in the cost of living and construction materials are now having an impact on the pricing of house construction and the price of housing more generally.

Regarding approved social housing bodies, I ask the Deputy to send the detail of what he has raised to me because we have the capital and we are supporting many approved social housing bodies in respect of the provision of social housing. I am not au fait with the specifics of the sheltered housing problem to which the Deputy referred in Donegal, but funding is there for approved social housing bodies to complete projects. Our approach is a constructive and proactive one, operating with approved social housing bodies to get as many projects as we can started and completed. That is our objective. We do not want to frustrate people and we do not want any barriers to frustrate organisations and approved social housing bodies in that regard.

On HAP, there are flexibilities within the scheme in terms of increases over and both the normal threshold in given situations.

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