asked the Minister for Local Government what proposals are in hand to increase the momentum of the housing drive; and the number of dwellings in all categories which will be completed in the current financial year.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Housing Drive Momentum.
31.
Planning of the national housing programme is proceeding in accordance with the proposals and projections of need set out in the white paper—Housing in the Seventies—which indicated that about 15,000 to 17,000 new houses would be needed each year by the mid-1970s. In 1970-71 a total of 13,671 new houses were completed and I expect that about 15,000 will be completed in the current financial year.
The basic objective of the Government's housing policy is to ensure that, as far as the resources of the economy permit, every family can obtain for their own occupation a house of good standard at a price or rent they can afford. To this end, the Government have steadily increased the allocations to housing in the public capital programme from £9 million in 1960-61 to about £38 million in the current financial year. This growth in expenditure, supplemented by increasing contributions from building societies and assurance companies, has enabled output to rise, virtually without interruption, over the past decade so that completions this year will be about 2½ times, and should soon be three times, the level achieved in the early 1960s.
Amongst the steps taken by the Government to achieve the best possible use of the resources that can be devoted to housing each year are the guaranteed order project, which I launched in the autumn of 1970, the recasting of the private housing grants scheme that year, the steps taken to secure better organisation of demand in the private sector, the advance land acquisition programmes adopted by local authorities, and the measures to promote greater efficiency and capacity in the building industry.
That was a right plant.
Would the Minister not agree that last year we built less houses than we built approximately 20 years ago?
I do not have the figures for 20 years ago and I do not know where the Deputy is getting his information from. Not alone will last year's record for completions be exceeded this year but it will be exceeded by quite a substantial amount, over 1,000.
I understood the figure the Minister gave was 13,000.
It was 13,671.