Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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82. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government his views on the slow-down in the construction of social housing, and on the implications of this slowing-down for renters reliant on the housing assistance payment; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3749/23]

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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I ask for the Minister's views on the slowdown in the construction of social housing and the implications of this slowdown for renters reliant on the housing assistance payment, HAP, the repeated failure to meet housing targets for social homes for the past three years in a row and the implications this has for recipients of HAP in particular.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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As the Deputy knows, Housing for All is our plan to increase the supply of housing across all tenures to an average of 33,000 homes per year. This includes the delivery of 90,000 social homes, 36,000 affordable purchase homes and 18,000 cost rental homes, so it is a very ambitious and badly needed programme. Housing for All is supported by an investment package of over €4 billion per year, through an overall combination of €12 billion in direct Exchequer funding, €3.5 billion in funding through the Land Development Agency and €5 billion of funding through the Housing Finance Agency.

We all know there were significant challenges to delivery in 2022 due to significant construction inflation, rising energy costs and supply chain difficulties. Nevertheless, local authorities and our partners in the approved housing bodies have worked very hard to maximise delivery throughout 2022. My Department will be preparing delivery statistics based on returns from the local authorities in the coming weeks so I do not yet have final output figures – I outlined the position to Deputy Ó Broin on the affordable side. However, I expect that when figures are collated, we will see higher numbers of social houses delivered this year than in many years. This is for new builds and there is also lease and acquisition, although we are phasing out leasing. The figure will be substantially higher than the figure referred to in the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform briefing document, and I know the Taoiseach has also said that.

It is also clear that a strong pipeline for social housing has been established. The construction status report for quarter 3 of 2022 showed there were 9,115 social homes under construction at the end of September 2022 and a further 13,709 homes at various stages of design and procurement. In 2022, we also delivered significant additional homes through targeted leasing and the acquisition programmes, such as purchase for tenantsin situ, with which all Deputies agree and which we want to ramp up further. These are all available to be allocated to households on the social housing waiting lists. The statistics for quarter 4 will set out details on all delivery streams and will be published in the coming weeks. I will be coming before the Oireachtas joint committee on that.

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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We all await those figures for quarter 4 with great interest. I agree with the Minister and I have raised many times the need to ramp up the tenant in situscheme, and I think there is cross-party agreement on that. However, listening to the figures that the Minister is giving and looking at the Housing Commission report today, it is hard to see the value of the targets being set by the Government at this stage, particularly when we are so unclear about whether they are being met. The Minister gave a figure of 9,000 under construction at the end of quarter 3 of 2022 but the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform is estimating only 6,500 social homes were completed in 2022, some 2,500 fewer than the initial target.

Speaking of targets, as recently as ten days ago, the Taoiseach seemed to announce arbitrarily an increase in the Housing for All target, from the average that the Minister has given of 33,000 homes to 40,000. I know our housing spokesperson, Senator Rebecca Moynihan, at the time said it seemed the Taoiseach was plucking figures from the air in terms of targets. Can the Minister say for sure that these targets are valid, particularly as the Housing Commission has now said Ireland needs between 42,000 and 60,000 new homes per year? How can we rely on targets?

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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The targets under Housing for All are set out year on year. They were set based on very detailed research and input from the sector. It is about building the capacity within the sector to deliver the homes that we need, doing things better and having more people in construction to build the homes we need. We have had about ten to 12 years of significant under-delivery across all tenures but if we look at 2020 and 2021, in those years there were just over 20,000 new builds. Obviously, that was impacted by Covid and two construction shutdowns. I would expect we will substantially exceed our overall Housing for All target of 24,600 for this year and we will have CSO figures very shortly in that regard. We need to ramp that up. These are baseline targets. Last year, 2022, we had a target of 24,600 and I would expect us to exceed that quite substantially. This year the target is 29,000 and I want to exceed that too. I will come back in my supplementary reply with regard to the Housing Commission.

Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)
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Listening again to the points about targets, the Minister acknowledged there has been under-delivery for years. The reality is that no matter what targets are set and what figures the Government gives, the experience of people who approach my office and the offices of other Members every day is that they simply cannot find homes, particularly people seeking help to find a social home. It is heartbreaking to tell them their position on the social housing list and to tell them about the lack of capacity in the system to deliver their housing needs.

I want to come back to HAP again because the reality is that many of those on HAP should be provided with social housing instead, and I think there is cross-party agreement on that. When we look at the figures that were paid out on HAP even last year, they are staggering figures that should instead be put into the delivery of social and affordable homes. Many of those on HAP are competing with other renters in the private sector in trying to find somewhere to rent and, in the meantime, HAP is subsidising private landlords. There is a lack of logic to the current system, with huge amounts of money being spent yet a failure to deliver the homes that people need.

Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail)
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I will use an example. In 2021, the last full year for which we have published figures, we had just over 5,000 new-build social homes but, overall, just over 9,000. We need to do more than that. In 2022, we set a target of 10,500 overall and we will be very close to that, and the figures on new builds will greatly exceed the figure the Deputy referenced from the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform, and I can give Deputies an assurance on that.

With regard to HAP, it supports about 60,000 tenancies and, of course, the people in those homes. I am no great fan of HAP but it is a necessity right now as we are building more social homes to transition people out. Over the last few years, we have reduced the level of funding available for new tenancies, so we are reducing that dependence. However, we cannot pull the plug on HAP overnight or what would happen to the 60,000 households? What we have to do is ramp up that social housing new-build delivery. In this quarter, we will have the final figures for that delivery. Even in the difficult year of 2022, there will be a substantial increase and I can confidently say we will have delivered more social homes in 2022 than we have done in decades. That is a good basis to work on and to ramp it up further from that.