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

Housing remains the number one societal issue for this State, unquestionably. There is no self-congratulatory tone from the Government side. I was honest with people when I had the honour of being made housing Minister in 2020 that the Government was bringing in a new housing plan and was dealing with much unmet demand. There was a ten-year period when, for many reasons, not enough homes were being built to meet demand. There is still a legacy of that. All I state here today are the facts. The fact is that since the Government came into office, it has delivered 125,000 new homes. That is a significant amount. We will do more. We will add to that significantly in the last quarter, to the disappointment of some opposite.

I will get back to the Deputy's specific points. If I look at the targets for this year's new-build social housing and social housing across the board, we will attain those. I remind the House that last year we delivered just short of 12,000 new social homes across all delivery mechanisms. When we came into government, there were no affordable homes being delivered in 2020 - none. We went from zero to 1,757 the first year, to 4,011 last year and our target this year is 6,400. We will exceed that target this year, which is very significant.

To take the Deputy's point in the constructive way she raised it, of course we need to do more but we have shown how we can scale up delivery. When the Government came into office, 20,000 homes were built in 2020. This year, even though Deputy Doherty will be very disappointed with this, we will deliver close to 40,000, nearly doubling output. Do we need to scale that up further? Absolutely we do.

I listened to Threshold's chief executive John-Mark McCafferty this morning on radio. He is someone I hold in high regard. He was very complimentary about the tenant in situ scheme and how that works. Last year we set a target of 1,500. We changed tack last year to protect tenancies. We bought over 1,800 homes. We ended unsecure HAP tenancies and converted them to social housing tenancies, adding to our social housing stock. We will exceed our target of 1,500 this year. It has been an important preventative measure. Separate to that, in the period the Government has been in office, 14,000 HAP tenancies have been converted into new social homes. The Simon Community, Focus Ireland and Threshold all recognise, unlike some, the progress being made and that there is more social housing stock now and more options for our people.

The number one issue remains - I agree with Deputy Bacik on this - those who do not have a home at all and those who are in emergency accommodation. What gives me cause for optimism is in quarter 2 this year we exited 630 families from emergency accommodation into permanent secure homes. People are spending less time in emergency accommodation now. The numbers are still rising and I am acutely aware that behind those numbers are people, families and kids. I know that. It is the first thing I think about every single day when I wake up. That is what drives us and the Government to deliver more social homes. Supply is the answer there.

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