Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance)
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119. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government the number of new build local authority homes, excluding voids and Part Vs, completed in 2016; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9046/17]

Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance)
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121. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government the number of new social housing units acquired via Part V in 2016; the number bought by councils or housing associations; the number that were leased; his views on the relative long and short term cost benefits of leasing and purchasing; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9048/17]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Question Nos. 119 and 121 together.

Under my Department’s Social Housing Capital Investment and Social Housing Current Expenditure Programmes, funding is provided to local authorities to deliver additional social housing stock through new construction projects and through the acquisition of new and previously owned houses/apartments. Details on the number of properties constructed and purchased by all local authorities for letting to those on their social housing waiting lists are available on my Department’s website at the following link:

www.housing.gov.ie/housing/social-housing/social-and-affordble/overall-social-housing-provision.

Details on the number of units delivered under Part V arrangements are also available on my Department’s website at the following link: www.housing.gov.ie/housing/statistics/affordable-housing/affordable-housing-and-part-v-statistics. Information on the full year of 2016 is currently being finalised and will be published shortly; provisional data published as part of the Q4 2016, Rebuilding Ireland Progress Report indicated that 640 social housing units were built in 2016.

While the construction programme has been advancing, it has made sense that local authorities take opportunities to acquire housing where there is a social housing need and where good value for money can be obtained and I am satisfied that they are deploying options to both buy and build new social housing in a balanced way. It is important that they utilise all opportunities to develop new social housing but the mix will increasingly switch towards construction on foot of the substantial pipeline of projects now in place. I continue to keep all of the social housing delivery mechanisms under review to ensure that they remain relevant and are meeting housing needs in a cost effective and value-for-money way.

Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance)
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120. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government if consideration will be given to collating numbers on social housing transfer lists nationally; his views on whether these numbers have increased in local authority areas that have introduced the housing assistance payment scheme, HAP; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [9047/17]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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The practical operation of transfer lists is a matter for each local authority to manage, on the basis of their allocation scheme made under section 22 of the Housing (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2009. My Department does not gather or hold any information on households seeking a transfer to an alternative social housing support, whether they are currently having their housing need met through HAP, RAS or any other form of support. My Department does not have any plans at present to collate such data.

On 16 December 2014, a statutory direction was issued to all authorities involved in the HAP scheme instructing then to take the necessary steps to ensure that households benefitting from HAP can avail of a move to other forms of social housing support, should they wish to do so, through a transfer option. Local authorities were also directed that HAP recipients, who apply to go on the transfer list, should get full credit for the time they spent on the waiting list and be placed on the transfer list with no less favourable terms than if they had remained on the waiting list.

It is ultimately up to the household to choose if they wish to be placed on a local authority’s transfer list, and I understand that a majority of HAP households do avail of this option.