Sheila Terry (Fine Gael)

I move amendment No. 7:

In page 5, before section 1, to insert the following new section:

"1.—The Minister for Social and Family Affairs shall, within 3 months of the commencement of this Act, lay before each House of the Oireachtas, a report on the success of the rent supplement and rental accommodation schemes.".

What progress has been made on the rental accommodation scheme and will the Minister clarify how it works? I am concerned by the amount of money the State spends on rent on private houses. Senator Cox mentioned this issue yesterday and it is a concern to many. It seems a waste of money to pay out rents to private landlords on an ongoing basis when the money would be better spent on building social housing. I am concerned by the delay in delivery of social and affordable housing by local authorities.

My son lives in Pamplona in northern Spain and when visiting him recently, I was amazed by the amount of social and affordable housing being built in the city, which is approximately the size of Dublin 15. I admire many aspects of how local government works there. The city is small, but it is building thousands of local and affordable houses. If the council in Pamplona can do it, why can we not do the same? I cannot understand why we are so slow at delivering social and affordable housing while at the same time we spend significant sums of money paying rent to private landlords to provide accommodation. Without the private landlords, we would be in a bad way, but perhaps if there was not such a significant stock of private housing available, the Government would be forced to deliver sooner. I ask the Minister to address this point in his response. Will he also outline the success of the rent supplement and rental accommodations schemes?