Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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32. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government his plans to speed-up the construction and acquisition of new housing units to meet the delivery of social housing targets under the Social Housing Strategy; and his views on the relatively low level of approvals for new social housing projects that his Department has made since January 2015. [11810/16]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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In line with the commitments of the programme for Government, I will be publishing an action plan for housing within the Government’s first 100 days. As Minister, I will be vigorously pursuing the earliest possible advancement of the construction and acquisition of new housing units to meet the targets under the Social Housing Strategy 2020.

On the acquisition of social housing, local authorities have delegated sanction to acquire houses and apartments up to a value of €600,000 in one transaction. In 2015, more than 1,000 new social housing units were purchased by local authorities, and that focus will continue in 2016. Authorities have been urged to be ambitious in this regard and funding is available in 2016 to support such ambition. The increased funding overall for housing from 2015 to 2016 is about €143 million, which is due to the previous Minister's prioritisation of this area within Government.

It is certainly not the case that there has been a relatively low level of approvals for new social housing projects by my Department since January 2015. To date, almost €680 million has been allocated for more than 3,900 social housing new builds, turnkey developments and acquisitions. This has kick-started social housing construction to a level that has not been seen for many years, but I accept that it is still not at the level it needs to be.

In my first week as Minister, I met with the chief executives of the local authorities and discussed with them their ideas and proposals to expedite delivery of social housing. This dialogue will be developed further as we progress towards finalising the new action plan for housing. As part of that action plan, I will be publishing the response from each of the local authorities, particularly the ones where there is real housing pressure. We will be publishing their emergency response plans for the first six months of that housing strategy so that everybody can see the level of ambition within each local authority. We will be doing everything we can to make sure that ambition is supported within the Department.

Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I know it is difficult for the Minister to bring forward meaningful plans and strategies and efforts to address this crisis. The first thing he could do is to declare an emergency, because that is what it is and has been. That is what this Government needs to recognise in the first instance. An all-party committee has been meeting for the last number of weeks and has another few weeks to go. It will be making recommendations to the Minister within his first 100 days in office with a view to formulating much of what will come from that. The Minister talked about the 2020 strategy, which the former Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, launched over two years ago, and about the great foundations he laid and the great progress that was made. No progress was made - it was one of the greatest failures and disasters of the last Government. Progress on the provision of housing and addressing the homelessness situation has been a non-event. It has been an absolute and total disaster. Has there been any analysis of the failures and the reasons it has been such an abject failure? That should be the Minister's first port of call before he moves on to the next stage. The Department had eight stages of approval from the day the site was selected until a shovel arrived on the site and construction began. That took two years. The Department told me in recent weeks that it has cut that down to four stages, as the Minister mentioned, but that happened early in 2015 and we still have not seen the sort of progress we would expect. Even four stages are not sufficient.

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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If the Deputy is quicker, we will get him back in for another supplementary question.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I do not want to pretend that we have been building as many social housing houses as we should have been for the last couple of years. We would like to have done more. We would have done more if we had more money available, but if one looks at the capital expenditure commitments between now and 2020-2021, there is €3 billion for social housing. It is a very serious commitment. My job is to look at the processes that are currently delaying the building of houses with the appropriate urgency to respond to what I have described as an emergency. In my first week in the job I made it very clear that I regard the current challenges in housing as a national emergency, particularly in Dublin and Cork, and they are also seriously affecting other cities. I can assure the Deputy that I am aware of the challenges that I have a responsibility to try to overcome. The Deputy will see exactly what we are proposing in a couple of months' time when we have a national plan for housing.

Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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I will be brief. The response has to be as great as it was in the 1930s and have the same effect. The Minister talks about there being no funding, but funding was never an issue for this purpose. The national Housing Finance Agency can borrow at very reduced rates. The credit unions-----

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Only in the last couple of years.

Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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The credit unions are champing at the bit to have a role in a model similar to the one in Canada, for example, whereby funding can go into a central pot to be taken out by local authorities and housing associations. Housing associations should be allowed to access private finance. There is an issue with the Government partaking in a funding mechanism for the private sector at exorbitant rates along with an American fund.

That must cease because it has failed. It does not bear any reality to the situation on the ground because it must be competitive. Funding cannot be got in the private sector either, and the Minister must play his role in ensuring that begins to feed out into the private sector to get construction going and to address the costs we discussed earlier. As I said, I am prepared to wait until his programme is in place, having consulted the all-party committee that is doing great work as we speak in meeting the sectors, stakeholders and those at the coalface in regard to homelessness in particular. We also have the mortgage issue, which is becoming-----

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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Thank you, Deputy. Your time has expired.

Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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-----pivotal too and on which a radical overhaul needs to take place.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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Can I come back on that?

Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael)
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Very briefly, for a matter of seconds.

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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For the information of the House, it is my understanding that I am meeting the committee next week and I look forward to exploring some concepts with the members and also hearing their ideas.

On the finance issue, it is true that there is a lot of available finance now. The Housing Finance Agency, for example, can borrow money at low interest rates now but that was not the case until relatively recently, so to talk about the housing crisis as it was or was not responded to in the past five years, assuming things were as they are now four or five years ago, is political amnesia. That is not the way it was at the time. We had a broken construction industry that was not capable of building houses and was incapable of getting finance to do it, even if it could do it. That is now changed and it is my job to ramp up capacity as quickly as possible and to fund it as intelligently as possible in order that we can get margin back into building and get housing output up again.