Dáil debates

Thursday, 26 October 2017

Ceisteanna - Questions - Priority Questions

Social and Affordable Housing Data

5:50 pm

Photo of Mattie McGrathMattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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4. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the number of social housing units that have been moved to build and completed in County Tipperary in each of the years 2012 to 2016. [45538/17]

Photo of Mattie McGrathMattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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I want to ask the Minister of State if he can tell us the number of social housing units that were planned, designed, commenced and completed in the years 2012 to 2016. It is a bit of a mystery. I would appreciate if the Minister of State could give me some information.

Photo of Damien EnglishDamien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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Given the constraints on resources in the years following the economic downturn, the local authority house building programme had to be reduced dramatically. This was evident in all local authority areas, including in Tipperary, where just 11 social houses were constructed by the council in the period 2012 to 2016. The focus in recent years has, instead,  been more on achieving good value acquisitions, with €6.7 million provided to Tipperary County Council in 2016 alone to fund 50 acquisitions, and a further €8 million provided so far this year for 60 acquisitions. An additional €1.5 million has been provided to support approved housing body activity in the same period.

The roll-out of the housing assistance payment, HAP, has also been of central importance to local authorities in meeting housing need, with over 900 households in Tipperary supported under the scheme last year and more than 700 supported so far in 2017. The refurbishment of vacant social housing stock has also been a priority and funding of over €3 million has been provided to Tipperary to return 200 vacant social houses to use between 2014 and 2016, with a further 58 units targeted this year but not yet completed.

Under Rebuilding Ireland, priority has been attached to achieving a very significant increase and acceleration in social housing construction. This is evident in the most recent status report, which showed more than 700 sites and approximately 11,000 new social homes at various stages of progress nationally. This status report includes 25 projects in Tipperary which, collectively, will deliver over 200 new homes for people on the county's waiting list at an estimated cost of almost €30 million. In addition, since the end of the second quarter, further projects involving the construction of 62 additional new social homes at Thurles - a site I visited myself - Nenagh, Fethard and Clonmel have been approved, supported by an additional  €9.8 million.

My Department will continue to engage actively with Tipperary County Council to deliver social housing through all available avenues, with a particular emphasis on additional construction projects. The Deputy has raised this issue with me a few times. There is no shortage of money when it comes to Tipperary's plans. We have asked the local authority there to bring forward an increased pipeline and an increased number of projects and we will address the funding with it as we go along with that. We are keen to work with the local authority to increase this supply of housing.

Photo of Mattie McGrathMattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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The genie is out of the bottle, I think, if there is no shortage of money. Did I hear the Minister of State right? How many houses did he say were built from 2011 to 2016?

Photo of Damien EnglishDamien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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There were 11 houses built.

Photo of Mattie McGrathMattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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Only 11, in the years 2011 to 2016. This gives the total-----

Photo of Damien EnglishDamien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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This is not new information.

Photo of Mattie McGrathMattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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The Minister of State has been telling us about Rebuilding Ireland and many other projects. The former Minister, Deputy Kelly was too when he was in place. We are sick of announcements. This is the problem. How could we have a homelessness crisis improved if we are not building houses? The local authority built houses from the 1930s to the 1990s and right into the millennium. Nothing at all is happening - 11 houses, that is one and a half houses per year. That is ridiculous. We knew that but the Government was telling us the council was getting this amount of money and there was this announcement. The council was saying it had not got the money. The drawings were gone up and so on. There is nothing happening. No wonder we have a housing crisis. This is replicated up and down the country. I cannot believe it. I can believe it because I cannot see the houses.

The Government was then using the people who get ESB connections for their figures and we all knew that was not the right barometer. It could be a business premises that had closed and was being reconnected. It could be a house that was sold or anything. The Government was trying to cod the people. It is codding nobody except itself. It should be level with the people and tell the truth that it is not building the houses, it has lost the will to build them and the local authorities have lost the will and have not the money to build them, or they have not got the experts there.

Photo of Damien EnglishDamien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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Before the Deputy gets carried away-----

Photo of Mattie McGrathMattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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I am not carried away at all.

Photo of Damien EnglishDamien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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We have been through these matters before endless times. There is no hiding figures and no codding anybody whatsoever. We are very straight with the figures. I gave the Deputy the figures for the years prior to the start of the Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness. I can give him the figures for the time since then. At this stage, the pipeline of projects is over 244 for Tipperary. I am very clear. I am asking the Deputy, his councillors and the local authorities to bring forward more proposals and we will fund them. I cannot be any clearer with the Deputy on that. I told him months ago that the funding is there for more projects for Tipperary.

In the plans put forward for 2015 to 2017, Tipperary was given a target to achieve 832 homes. It was given a budget of €57.1 million to achieve that. That is the money Tipperary was given to spend on housing and so far it has reached about 715 homes under that target and we expect it to reach the 832 units before the end of the year because that is the target set out. We will do all we can to work with the local authorities in the months ahead to achieve that. The funding set aside is for a combination of bringing back in voids, acquiring vacant properties, acquisitions and so on, as well as building new houses, and that is what has been achieved so far. The local authority is short of its target but we expect it to reach it in the months ahead.

Photo of Mattie McGrathMattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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I am mystified. There is only one way to sort this out, which is for the Minister of State, myself and any other Members of the Oireachtas who so wish should sit down with the county manager. We are being told one thing. The Minister of State is saying the county council is being flooded with money and is not building. He cannot blame the council for everything. The council is under fierce pressure with the homelessness crisis and dealing with HAP. There are voids all over the place. They have been there for five and six years and the same is true in the Minister of State's county too. There is a lot of dysfunctionality somewhere in the system. Money is being announced. If that money is not drawn down, does it go back to the Department? There are many questions I would like to ask.

Just 11 houses in that number of years is crazy. Everyone can see that. That is why we have the housing crisis. It is replicated up and down the country. There is something wrong. I have asked the former Minister, Deputy Coveney, the Minister of State and other Ministers with responsibility for housing to bring in the county managers and ask them to explain. I do not mean like calling the banks for tea and sweet cake. The Government should just say we want action here. We want the people housed. We want some kind of functionality in the building industry and the knock-on effect on the economy as well, apart altogether from the unfortunate people waiting for houses for 12 and 15 years. There are over 3,000 people waiting in Tipperary, approved applicants, not to mention all the people who are not approved. This is crazy.

We put all our eggs in one basket with the HAP and the rent allowance and no building. We need a building stock because we will end up with no stock at all if we do not have a building stock. I am asking the Minister of State to get a date for the county manager and director of services for housing in order that we can meet in the Minister of State's office here in Dublin and have some answer to the question, not the Minister of State telling me one thing here and them throwing something else around in Tipperary. Dúirt bean liom go ndúirt bean léi go raibh fear i dTiobraid Árainn a bhfuil póca ina léine aige. This is what is going on - a fudge up and down the country. Around the seven different offices of the Department around the country they go, around to Castlebar, around the merry-go-round, pushing paper.

Photo of Damien EnglishDamien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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There is no fudge here. The facts and the figures are published every month on the website. The Deputy can see them. We have engaged with Tipperary County Council on a regular basis and will do that even more, directly with the county manager. I have met the Deputy and his councillors down there twice myself. The Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, has been down there too. We want to engage with the Deputy. Tipperary County Council has brought forward a number of plans, over 25 projects, that were not there a year ago and are there now to build houses in the course of 2018 and we want to see that happening and we want to see more of it. We have been very clear umpteen times to all local authority managers, councillors and so on that the money is there to support this activity and we want to do more of it and increase the pipeline. There is a pipeline of projects across the country of over 11,000 houses on 700 sites. We want to at least treble that. That includes Tipperary and we will work with the Deputy on that.

In respect of the voids, in case the Deputy has any doubts, over 7,000 voids were brought back into use before 2017. By the end of 2017, over 8,400 houses that were empty and unused - social houses - will be back in use. It is good progress. It should never have happened in the first place but we are bringing them back into play. It is taxpayers' money well spent bringing them back into use. That is the figure. It is factual. We do not make the figures up. They are there for the Deputy to track every month.