Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

43. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the number of social homes completed in 2018 by local authorities and approved housing bodies; the number of void units restored and reallocated; the way in which he plans to ensure that the system delivers the number of homes that are needed annually to address the crisis in homelessness and housing need; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [1694/19]

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

My question is specifically regarding the delivery of social homes. It refers to the delivery report for quarter 3. I know the Minister does not have final figures for the end of the year. I am seeking to find out the number of social homes delivered in so far as he can tell us, also the number of void units restored and reallocated, and what he intends to do to ensure this year the required number of social homes for people on housing waiting lists will be delivered.

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for her question. Over the course of Rebuilding Ireland, the Government is committed to meeting the housing needs of more than 137,000 households. With funding of more than €6 billion in place, significant progress on implementation of the plan has already been made.

The most recent data available, which are published on my Department’s website, show that by end September of last year, more than 63,700 additional social housing solutions had been provided; 18,781 of these were delivered in the first nine months of 2018 alone, representing 74% of the target for the year as a whole. This included more than 4,500 build, acquisition and leased homes delivered by local authorities and approved housing bodies. Regarding the voids programme, some 605 voids were funded by my Department in the first three quarters of last year. The issue of efficient tenanting of social housing is, of course, a matter for each local authority.

Data in regard to fourth quarter of 2018 are currently being compiled and will be published shortly. I am satisfied from the information currently available that it will show a strong performance versus our overall national target for the year.

The picture will vary from one local authority area to another in terms of what was achieved. Last January, I committed to publishing individual targets for housing delivery in each local authority area in 2018, to enable greater transparency and accountability when it comes to increasing the stock of social housing. The Government has committed more than €6 billion to Rebuilding Ireland and it is vital that taxpayer funding is used efficiently and transparently to deliver new homes.

Targets for 2018 were published and, in conjunction with delivery information for the fourth quarter of last year, I will shortly publish full-year delivery details by local authority, measured against the targets set at the beginning of the year. Following another housing summit later this month, this process will be repeated for 2019.

With the policy, resources and funding in place, it is up to local authorities to ensure delivery. I will continue to work with them to ensure the accelerated delivery of much needed homes for our citizens.

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

From the information he has to hand, does the Minister believe the targets will be achieved? In response to a previous question, he indicated he had got some information back. Does he expect the targets specifically for the building of social housing, as opposed to all the other delivery methods he talks about, will be achieved, both by local authorities and approved housing bodies?

The Minister has shown initiative regarding, for example, St. Michael's Estate. He has just said he expects there will be fewer HAP scheme solutions in the coming year. That is welcome. Will he use the public land available in the context of providing solutions such as cost-rental in order to increase the number of social houses that are being built and move away from reliance on the private sector? Such reliance developed largely because there was not the capacity to build social housing, but we should be over that now. We should be at a point whereby councils can deliver with the support of his Department. Will he ensure that there will be no obstacles or delays in the context of delivering the kind of social housing that most people who come to our clinics want, namely, secure council homes as opposed to insecure private sector homes?

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for her question. Every delivery mechanism that increases the stock of social housing is important. That is why we have a number of such mechanisms. In the event that a particular mechanism is not successful in a given period or year, we can then make up the shortfall using other delivery streams. It is important to have that kind of redundancy in place. If there are shocks that we have not anticipated, that might potentially take one stream of delivery away but we have others on which we can rely. As a result, we will never be in a situation where there is nothing happening in the context of the delivery of social housing.

What I expect to see with, for example, voids - we discussed this matter at a meeting of the relevant joint committee in December - is that we will exceed our target. However, we will still only count the number we identified in the context initially. This means that even though we will complete work on more voids than originally envisaged, we will not count above the ceiling we have in respect of our target. I also indicated to the joint committee that we will probably exceed our target for acquisitions. I know that we will do so because I had to allocate extra funding towards the end of the year when I received additional supplementary funding approved by Cabinet in respect of further acquisitions. Part of the reason for this was that leasing was not happening in some areas in the way we hoped.

When the numbers have been finalised - this will certainly happen prior to the housing summit, which is scheduled for the end of the month - I will provide the Deputy with a breakdown of the targets per local authority in order that she can see which local authorities exceeded their targets and which did not. We can then have a conversation on the reason this might have happened.

Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

What does the Minister intend to do about the councils that are not reaching their targets? If there are targets, they should be reached. If the problems are in his Department as opposed to with the councils - which is what some of them would argue - we need to know. If the problems are with specific councils, we need to know that as well. Either way, we need to see social houses built because whatever he may say about acquisitions, leasing and so on, ultimately, what we need to see is more houses built through the public sector through using public land. The private sector will deliver a certain amount but, ultimately, what he can control is what is built on public land with public money.

Will the Minister be open, for example, to increasing the number of sites used for cost-rental? Will he be open to extending the number of public affordable and social houses that will be built on the land owned by the State as opposed to the private sector? That is what we have put forward in our proposals, namely, that we have a lot of public land and we should be building social and affordable housing on that public land as opposed to facilitating the private developers building on that land.

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for that question. She is absolutely right regarding what I can control. That is why I wanted to bring transparency in terms of what local authorities are doing when it comes to social housing delivery. We secure funding and put the policy in place and then the local authorities are given the resources. Ultimately, it is the local authorities that are responsible for delivery. We work with them in order to facilitate this. By having targets for each local authority area across the different streams and then publishing the actual output against that, we can see what they have done.

We have held a number of housing summits. On this occasion, the summit will be a little different. It will be held on two separate half days. Those who are performing very strongly will attend on one of the days and those who are not performing as strongly will attend on the other. The authorities that are not performing as well as others face different challenges and needs in terms of what must be worked through. By using mechanisms such as those to which I refer, we can work with local authorities to overcome some of the kinks that might still exist in certain areas.

The data for the third quarter show that it was up by 80% on the third quarter of 2017. They are increasing the number of social housing homes being built and I expect them to continue with a great drive throughout 2019, as I expect them to have done in the final quarter of 2018. I want cost rental to be a major component of our rental market. It cannot be put in place overnight but we are working on a project on St. Michael's Estate and will talk with the European Investment Bank, EIB, again in December about funding for this. I met LDA officials in their offices to talk about how I think some of those key sites which are close to the core urban centres could be appropriate for cost rental. Public land for public housing is at the core of our policies.