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

I will use an example. In 2021, the last full year for which we have published figures, we had just over 5,000 new-build social homes but, overall, just over 9,000. We need to do more than that. In 2022, we set a target of 10,500 overall and we will be very close to that, and the figures on new builds will greatly exceed the figure the Deputy referenced from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, and I can give Deputies an assurance on that.

With regard to HAP, it supports about 60,000 tenancies and, of course, the people in those homes. I am no great fan of HAP but it is a necessity right now as we are building more social homes to transition people out. Over the last few years, we have reduced the level of funding available for new tenancies, so we are reducing that dependence. However, we cannot pull the plug on HAP overnight or what would happen to the 60,000 households? What we have to do is ramp up that social housing new-build delivery. In this quarter, we will have the final figures for that delivery. Even in the difficult year of 2022, there will be a substantial increase and I can confidently say we will have delivered more social homes in 2022 than we have done in decades. That is a good basis to work on and to ramp it up further from that.

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