John Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I disagree wholeheartedly with this amendment. A person who has been allocated a social house does not care whether it is built by a local authority, a private developer, the LDA or an approved housing body. Saying that we must build houses, affordable houses in the case of this amendment, in a certain way is an ideological position. Some local authorities will be able to ramp up the provision of affordable housing more quickly than others. As Senator Casey said on Committee Stage, other local authorities may not have land banks on which to build affordable houses.

We must provide local authorities with flexibility when it comes to meeting the ambitious affordable housing targets the Government will set. I know the Minister has met all local authorities in the past couple of weeks regarding those targets, which will be published in July. Telling local authorities they can only acquire turnkey units at a 15% rate might be appropriate for one local authority but it will not be appropriate for all of them. We are setting down national legislation here and we must give local authorities the flexibility to be able to provide affordable housing by any mechanism possible. We should not try to restrict this in any way.