Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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252. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government if councils should proceed with traditional build social housing in order to ensure there are no delays with regard to councils that are awaiting details of the rapid delivery procurement procedures before they proceed with housing plans on specific sites; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [35918/16]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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All local authorities have active programmes of new social housing construction through standard construction approaches. This includes those authorities who are also undertaking rapid build social housing programmes.

Since the launch of the Social Housing Strategy, and continuing with the increased targets announced under Rebuilding Ireland: Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness, a substantial pipeline of standard-build construction units is now in place for all local authorities. The rapid build housing programme is adding to this pipeline, but standard-build social housing projects will continue to be advanced across all local authorities.

In that regard, our efforts to significantly ramp up social housing construction nationally are taking effect. In 2015, only 74 units were constructed by local authorities. In 2016, the construction of over 1,400 new social housing units will start or have already started on site and more than 3,000 additional units are scheduled to start on site in 2017. In addition, we will continue to use other streams for early social housing delivery, such as acquisitions, remediation, turn-key developments and long-term leasing.