James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)

Meeting our social housing targets is absolutely crucial. Meeting them through new builds is best practice and that is where we want to expand as quickly as possible. However, we need local authorities to lead on their own-build programmes as well because that builds resilience into the system no matter what the economic situation may be to ensure that there is not a reliance of delivery through Part V and turnkeys, output under which can be negatively impacted by market conditions or particular conditions in local authorities. We have seen some local authorities really expand on own builds and I give credit to those local authorities. Some local authorities have exceeded past social housing targets but perhaps were overly reliant on a non-own-build properties. We need to see them develop their capacity. Some local authorities are not achieving under either of those. Crucially, we need all our local authorities moving towards own builds.

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