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

It remains the single most important challenge we face, no less so for those families and individuals who find themselves in emergency accommodation. Supporting those individuals and families is a priority. Critical to that support is enabling households to exit homelessness and increasing housing supply.

Almost 12,000 new social homes were delivered last year, a massive increase in social housing delivery. That was through Bills, acquisition and leasing, including 8,110 new-build social homes last year. By any fair assessment, that was a very good performance. That is the highest level of new-build social homes in about 50 years. If HAP and RAS are included, 21,733 social housing supports were provided last year. Record State investment of €5 billion has been made available this year to support the largest home building programme ever, including 9,300 new-build social homes.

The funding will also continue the support of the tenant in situ scheme. I remind the Deputy that last year we had a target of 200 acquisitions.

We increased that to 1,500 and last year there were 1,830 concluded sales for insecure tenancies. Those homes were purchased and converted to social housing tenancies. It is a good scheme, which is working and we will continue it into this year as it is an important preventative measure.

In budget 2024 we allocated €242 million for the delivery of homeless services and the funding will continue to support the provision of emergency accommodation and the related support we need. Fundamentally, we need to continue to increase our supply of permanent solutions. Thankfully, I have met families and households who are now in their permanent, safe, secure social homes because of the increase in funding. Homelessness remains a challenge, unquestionably so, and we need to increase the supply.

There are challenges in the private rental sector, which I will return to in my reply to the supplementary question.

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