Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 9 February 2005
144 Ms O. Mitchell asked the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government the action he intends to take to ensure that moneys allocated for social housing to local authorities is spent for this purpose and not channelled into other projects, as shown by his Department’s own figures; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [3935/05]
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In general, over the past decade, the resources allocated to my Department for social housing purposes have been fully spent. In fact, since the beginning of the national development plan, spending on social housing has been ahead of target. My Department, in its overall responsibility for managing housing capital budgets, seeks to ensure that these are spent as effectively as possible. Where one authority does not require their full social housing allocation, my Department can reassign the balance to other authorities and there is also flexibility to use any unused resources for other housing purposes. There are no circumstances where a local authority can use funds allocated for social housing for any other purpose.
The Government is allocating record levels of funding to local authorities for its social and affordable housing programmes in 2005. The total Exchequer capital funding available for social and affordable housing in 2005, taking account of the additional resources announced in the budget, will be almost €1.18 billion which represents an increase of 17% on the likely outturn in 2004.
In association with this funding, my Department has initiated the development by local authorities of new five year actions plans for social and affordable housing, to ensure a systematic and integrated approach to the effective use of these resources. I consider that given the nature of continuous housing need, the preparation of these action plans is beneficial to local authorities in identifying priority needs over the coming years and providing a coherent and co-ordinated response across all housing services, including delivery of housing by the voluntary and co-operative housing sector. Two thirds of these plans have already been approved by my Department and the remainder are likely to be approved within a matter of weeks.
It is clear that the new action plans provide a basis for monitoring performance on social and affordable housing delivery. Given the recent introduction of this mechanism and the multi-annual nature of the approach, we have allowed for a mid-term review in 2006. This will allow my Department to identify those authorities which are not performing well and take the necessary action to rectify this situation.
At a broader level, a system of service indicators has been implemented which provide a basis for monitoring performance of local authorities across the full range of their services.
