Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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18. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government his views on whether one of the main barriers holding back the provision of social housing is the inability of local authorities to build construction projects of scale due to an overly rigid application of sustainable communities criteria, in view of the fact that of the 276 social housing projects that have passed pre planning, just 15 include 50 or more individual houses or apartments. [25038/17]

Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael)
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Government policy, as set out in the Rebuilding Ireland Action Plan for Housing and Homelessness, is to deliver sustainable communities with an appropriate tenure mix for all our citizens, irrespective of the method of housing provision. An appropriate and balanced mixture of tenures in new developments is necessary in order to avoid the significant effects of social isolation and limiting of opportunities that can occur with large mono-tenure estates, frequently necessitating their regeneration and remediation at a later stage with considerable cost exposure to the State, as well as a well documented negative legacy for the residents involved.

Local authorities are tasked with the provision of social housing for which approval is sought from my Department. The decision in relation to the size of development is made by the local authority on the basis of local need, available lands, permissible densities and what is considered locally appropriate, taking account of the 2007 policy document, "Delivering Homes, Sustaining Communities". In this regard, my Department provides guidance on the scale of social housing which would be suitable in a particular context or area. This guidance is based on the size of the host town or city and the proportionate nature of the development to ensure good social integration and cohesion.

The achievement of scale in the overall social housing construction programme does not require excessively large individual projects. Less than one year since the launch of Rebuilding Ireland , over 10,000 social housing dwellings in more than 600 developments nationwide are now in the social housing construction projects pipeline, showing already that scale of overall delivery and the achievement of sustainable communities are not mutually exclusive.