John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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716. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the number of houses purchased by each local authority to be added to the social housing stock, in tabular form; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42658/17]

John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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720. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the funding that remains available in 2017 for local authorities to purchase houses to add to their social housing stock; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42662/17]

John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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721. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government the amount that has been spent to date in 2017 by local authorities purchasing houses to add to their social housing stock; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [42663/17]

Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 716, 720 and 721 together.

Under my Department’s Social Housing Investment Programme, funding is available to all local authorities to deliver additional social housing stock through new construction projects and through the acquisition of new and previously owned houses/apartments for social housing use.

Details on the number of properties purchased and built 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: . Information on quarter two of 2017 is currently being finalised and will be published shortly, with information on quarter three of 2017 to follow thereafter. However, current projections are that in addition to the circa 400 new social homes delivered under the acquisitions programme during quarter one, a further 270 approximately have been delivered in quarter two.

At the end of September 2017, expenditure under the local authority acquisitions programme was circa €165 million, including expenditure of €29 million self-funded by the local authorities from surplus local property tax receipts.

Acquisitions remain an important source of new social housing supply and funding remains available to support this activity. However, it is important that local authorities are selective in such actions so as to avoid, for example, impacting disproportionately on the private housing market.  Also, the local authority construction programme is intensifying as we implement the measures under Rebuilding Ireland and, as recently announced, that is increasingly where local authorities will focus their resources in the years ahead.