Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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Question 554: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government the progress made in regard to the commitment given in the Programme for Government to expand delivery of social and affordable housing options to meet the needs of 90,000 households. [19373/08]

Michael Finneran (Roscommon-South Leitrim, Fianna Fail)
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The Government is committed to expanding social and affordable housing programmes over the coming years. The Programme for Government provisions build on the Government's housing policy statement Delivering Homes, Sustaining Communities, and the National Development Plan 2007-2013 (NDP), reflecting also the strong commitment to expand social and affordable housing provision contained in the social partnership agreement, Towards 2016.

The NDP provides the resources — some €18 billion in total — which will support increased output from social and affordable housing measures and result in the needs of some 140,000 new households being met in this period. This level of provision has enabled significant progress to be made on the expanded delivery of social and affordable housing programmes with over 13,000 housing units provided through these measures last year by local authorities and the voluntary and co-operative housing sector. When account is taken of the full range of housing schemes and naturally occurring vacancies in the social housing stock, the housing needs of some 18,300 households were met in 2007.