Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for his questions. Context is important. The public want to know the full facts. It is fair enough to criticise the Government for the housing budget not having been spent fully last year. I do not think it is fair, though, not put this into context by saying the budget for housing was the largest ever last year and will be the largest ever again this year. The budget for housing has more than doubled in the last couple of years. This is an important contextual aspect and an important fact that should be acknowledged by anyone discussing this matter. I hope the Deputy agrees with this. It would be a very different scenario if the budget had been cut and we had been able to spend it all. Facts and context, therefore, are important. To talk about the budget being unspent without putting this into the context of the fact that it has increased massively does not give the full facts to the public. I think the public deserve the full facts.

If this were solely a matter of money, political will or care and compassion, the housing crisis would have been solved a long time ago because there is no lack of money, political will or care, concern and understanding from the Government. There are very real constraints to building new homes in Ireland. These range from planning objections to planning permissions to the availability of labour to the supply of materials. Notwithstanding these aspects, we built 30,000 new homes in Ireland last year and more new social housing than in any period since the 1970s. We will do as well, if not better, again this year.

We do not expect there to be an underspend this year and we are taking actions to ensure this will not be the case. For example, we are waiving development levies to bring down the cost of construction and the cost of building new housing. The tenant in situscheme has funding for 1,500 homes to be bought from landlords to prevent people falling into homelessness. This initiative is going extremely well now. The Deputy will know that 250 purchases are in process in our county of Fingal alone. This means we will be able to increase the budget for this scheme and purchase more than the 1,500 homes we have funding for now. There has been a really strong take-up of grants to bring derelict buildings back into use and breathe life into them for new housing, particularly across rural housing, so we will provide more money for this scheme to ensure more homes can be brought back into use if needed. We can also provide money for the purchase of land because local authorities should be purchasing land for future social and affordable housing developments.

These are the actions we are taking. If we drill down into the underspend, we will see that it occurred for several reasons, but it was particularly down to local authorities not performing. Local authorities were provided with funding to build social and affordable housing but were unable to do so. This is precisely why we need to use a whole different set of actors when it comes to building housing. I refer to the local authorities, the Land Development Agency, affordable housing bodies and the private sector.

If we adopt the approach the Opposition advocates and rely entirely on the State and local authorities, fewer houses, not more, will be built.

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