James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)

I am treating it as an emergency. The number seeking social housing is increasing, as it is for cost-rental and affordable and private housing, because the population of this country is exploding as a result of the successful economic steerage of this country. It is a good thing that our population is increasing as a result of our economy. It puts more pressure on me and the Government to deliver even more housing and we are going to do that to meet the increasing population needs. I acknowledge that we need more social housing. There is no question about that. I am determined to deliver more. That is why today I got Government agreement to end the four-stage process and the three-stage and two-stage processes. We will have only a single-stage process for local authorities to deliver social housing so that those local authorities that are determined to build social housing will be able to do so. We have increased the ceiling from €8 billion to €200 billion, which is a significant increase as well. The local authorities that want to build can build. They can build at the moment, but now they will be able to build even more quickly.

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