Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are a lot of issues there. In direct answer to Deputy Durkan's question, and to a number of others, in terms of what we are doing and what we can do, we are building housing again at a level that we have not seen in a very long period. I know that cannot come fast enough for people looking for a roof over their head, people wondering if they can move out of the box room and people worried about insecure tenure, but there are real encouraging signs now. In the first five months of this year construction commenced on almost the same number of houses that were built in all of last year.

We are going to set new housing targets that are going to raise the bar. Only a couple of months ago, many people scoffed when I talked about needing to build 250,000 more homes between 2025 and 2030. They are beginning to see that it is now achievable and necessary. The Housing Commission states we need to do even more than that. We are seeing a system that is now going to be able to deliver that. The new housing targets will be set out later this year. As I outlined in my original answer, we will be showing in granular detail the composition and mix of that in terms of social, affordable and private housing. In the meantime, we will continue to invest in emergency accommodation and emergency solutions as well for the likes of the constituents referred to by the Deputy.

On the rough sleeper count, I look forward to directly meeting some homeless organisations myself on this shortly because I do want to see what we can do to make more progress on rough sleeping. Deputy Cian O'Callaghan is correct, we should not in any way , shape or form – not that we do – accept that this becomes a kind of norm or acceptable part of our housing system. We are better than that as a country. I can tell the Deputy some of the things we are doing to provide more emergency accommodation. We are also increasing the homeless funds for local authorities. There is clearly a need to do more, but also perhaps to understand more in terms of the practical measures that we can take.

I am very much open to doing this.

The point made by Deputy Murnane O'Connor regarding local authority lists comes up in my constituency office from time to time as well. We need to look at an entire overhaul of how people apply for social housing. People who live in a certain part of my county might be on the border with another county; they are on the list for one county but not the other. If they miss their application form, they have a row to get themselves put back on the list, with the two or three years lost being added back. Some work on this is under way, but I will seek an urgent update for the Deputy and others as to where it is at.

Deputy Boyd Barrett and others referred to thresholds. Deputy Boyd Barrett raises this regularly. We raised the thresholds for social housing recently. Deputy Boyd Barrett responded that this was not enough. We will consider what more can be done. There are definitely anomalies in the system such that people fall between stools in terms of not qualifying for one thing or going a little over in respect of the other. I am engaging with the Minister for housing on this matter.

On house prices, we have seen a number of reports in recent days. We have seen the Daft report and the CSO's residential property price index, which is seen as the authoritative source of data. The CSO has found that prices are 9.6% above their highest level at the peak of the property boom in April 2007 and that Dublin residential property prices are 1.8% lower than the 2007 peak. There is one thing that is not often spoken about when it comes to house prices and that is income levels. Since 2007, average weekly earnings have increased by more than 30% compared to an increase in house prices of more than 10%. This is not me suggesting in any way, shape or form that housing or housing affordability are where they need to be, but we need to look at matters in the round when we quote data. Research by the Central Bank shows the price-to-income ratio was 5.5 in 2006, 4.7 in 2018 and is now 4.6. This shows that while house prices are still far too high for far too many, the level of fluctuation is, perhaps, not as is often presented with raw data.

Deputy Wynne spoke about oversight of emergency accommodation and specific issues relating to County Clare. I will bring these queries directly to the Minister for housing and ask that he might raise them with the local authority and perhaps come back to Deputy Wynne's office.

See this speech in context