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

As the Deputy knows, Housing for All is our plan to increase the supply of housing across all tenures to an average of 33,000 homes per year. This includes the delivery of 90,000 social homes, 36,000 affordable purchase homes and 18,000 cost rental homes, so it is a very ambitious and badly needed programme. Housing for All is supported by an investment package of over €4 billion per year, through an overall combination of €12 billion in direct Exchequer funding, €3.5 billion in funding through the Land Development Agency and €5 billion of funding through the Housing Finance Agency.

We all know there were significant challenges to delivery in 2022 due to significant construction inflation, rising energy costs and supply chain difficulties. Nevertheless, local authorities and our partners in the approved housing bodies have worked very hard to maximise delivery throughout 2022. My Department will be preparing delivery statistics based on returns from the local authorities in the coming weeks so I do not yet have final output figures – I outlined the position to Deputy Ó Broin on the affordable side. However, I expect that when figures are collated, we will see higher numbers of social houses delivered this year than in many years. This is for new builds and there is also lease and acquisition, although we are phasing out leasing. The figure will be substantially higher than the figure referred to in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform briefing document, and I know the Taoiseach has also said that.

It is also clear that a strong pipeline for social housing has been established. The construction status report for quarter 3 of 2022 showed there were 9,115 social homes under construction at the end of September 2022 and a further 13,709 homes at various stages of design and procurement. In 2022, we also delivered significant additional homes through targeted leasing and the acquisition programmes, such as purchase for tenantsin situ, with which all Deputies agree and which we want to ramp up further. These are all available to be allocated to households on the social housing waiting lists. The statistics for quarter 4 will set out details on all delivery streams and will be published in the coming weeks. I will be coming before the Oireachtas joint committee on that.

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