asked the Minister for the Environment the number of local authority houses he expects to be built in 1986; and the difference between the national plan estimate and the figure that appears in the published estimate.
Ceisteanna—Questions. Oral Answers. - Local Authority Housing.
11.
I expect that about 5,500 local authority houses will be completed in 1986. The number of houses becoming available for reletting is expected to be over 4,000 allowing the target set in the national plan of providing accommodation annually for 9,000 households to be met comfortably again this year. Building on Reality did not contain separate projections of expenditure on local authority housing. Total public capital expenditure on housing in 1986 was projected to be £397 million. The actual capital provision for housing this year is £409 million.
The Minister's answer related to the total expenditure on housing but the specific question relates to local authority expenditure. In Building on Reality the Government claimed to recognise the importance of adequate housing and said that a sum of £200 million had been spent on local authority housing last year. Working on a sum of £200 million for 1984, surely the Minister will accept that the sum of £178 million is totally inadequate for 1986? Building on Reality also mentioned a figure of 6,000 local authority houses being built each year but this figure has not been met as is obvious from the Minister's reply.
Obviously we can pick bits out of Building on Reality to suit our arguments, but it said that we would provide accommodation annually for 9,000 households on the waiting list by building 6,000 new houses each year and by seeking to ensure that about 3,000 houses from existing stock would be available for reletting. That would ease the demand for local authority housing by retaining the present range of incentives to private housing which cater particularly for people on local authority waiting lists and by promoting a number of new measures to facilitate local authority tenants to avail of private housing.
It is important to note that 9,000 households will be removed from the waiting list and provided with houses. During the past two years we exceeded the figure of 9,000 by over 1,000 in each of the years and it will also be exceeded this year. It must be obvious to Deputies that there has been a rapid drop in the number of people on the housing lists in their areas because of the availability of houses for prospective tenants on the waiting lists. This is more obvious in the city and county of Dublin where waiting lists have been considerably reduced over the past two years.
There is a crisis in the building industry which they have never experienced before——
A question, please.Mr. R. Burke: The Government have the opportunity to assist the construction industry by investing in badly needed local authority housing——
That would be more appropriate on the next question.
Would the Minister——
You are anticipating Deputy Brennan.
That is not possible.
Does the Minister consider that an investment in local authority housing as set out in the national plan is the sort of investment the Government should be making to help unemployment in the building industry? I fully accept that the Minister is giving a response today, but the difficulty is that he wanted to make more money available in his Estimate and was beaten down by his colleagues around the Cabinet table.
That is not a question.
The Deputy should realise that because of the grant of £5,000 to tenants and tenant purchasers, 40 per cent have bought private houses——
The Minister lost about £30 million at the Cabinet table.
That is the equivalent of about 2,500 houses being bought in the private sector.