Ann Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Senator for raising this very serious matter. I would point out, as he has done, that the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly, is directly responsible for the social housing strategy. This gives me an opportunity to congratulate the Minister, with whom I work closely, on the determination with which he is pursuing the social housing strategy.

As the Senator is aware, housing supply, public and private, is one of the most significant challenges and priorities currently faced by the Government. In this regard, the Government has set out a range of actions in the Construction 2020 strategy to support expanded housing supply and, in the social housing strategy, has set aside some €4 billion to deal with social housing provision in the period to 2020. The lack of supply of private housing is particularly acute in the Dublin area, where demand well outstrips supply, with consequential effects on house prices and also rents.

To put the issue in context, at the peak of construction activity in 2006, more than 93,000 houses were built nationally, of which just under 20,000 were built in Dublin. Further to the economic and banking crisis, activity declined very sharply. Only around 11,000 housing units were completed nationally in 2014, of which 3,268 were in the Dublin area. There is undoubtedly an urgent need to increase the level of housing supply, particularly in Dublin, in order to return to a market equilibrium whereby supply equals demand, having regard to the increasing population and changing household formation trends.

To help address these issues, and further to the publication of the Government's Construction 2020 strategy for a renewed construction sector, the Dublin housing supply co-ordination task force was established last year with a particular focus on addressing supply-related issues in Dublin. This includes the monitoring of trends in new housing developments, as well as the identification of any obstacles - including the provision of key infrastructure - to the bringing on stream of viable and market-ready developments. One of the first actions of the task force was to analyse the stock of planning permissions and zoned land for housing developments in Dublin.The first report of the task force, which is available on my Department's website, concluded that across the four Dublin local authorities, approximately 21,000 housing units already had planning permission, equating to three years' supply, which permissions do not have any infrastructural constraints. The task force further reported that an additional 25,000 new homes are considered permissible on existing lands which are zoned for housing, and which do not have any infrastructural constraints. Both of these figures are subject to change as planning permissions are lodged and granted. Given a predicted housing requirement of approximately 7,500 new homes per annum over the coming years, as identified by the Housing Agency, the position is that there is sufficient land with planning permissions, and-or zoned for housing, to meet the predicted requirements for the next six years in the Dublin area.

The data on Dublin housing supply as published by the Dublin housing supply co-ordination task force is the most recent and up-to-date information available. A further analysis of zoned lands with infrastructural constraints has been undertaken by the task force with a view to ensuring that further supply comes on-stream during that follow-on period. The task force has recently submitted a second report to my Department focusing on this issue and the Minister will give due consideration to its conclusions in consultation with his Government colleagues.