Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 14 April 2016
778. Deputy Richard Boyd Barrett asked the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government for a progress report on the Social Housing Strategy 2020, including the numbers of houses delivered by each local authority under each category. [6675/16]
View answerThe Social Housing Strategy 2020 is a target-driven plan of action to increase the supply of social housing by 110,000 additional units out to 2020, with 35,000 new units to be delivered by local authorities and approved housing bodies and 75,000 households to be supported mainly through the Housing Assistance Payment Scheme. The Strategy has been supported by two successive budgets with €1.7 billion allocated to social housing in 2015 and 2016. The Social Housing Strategy 2020 is available on my Department’s website at the following link:
http://www.environ.ie/housing/social-housing/social-housing-strategy/social-housing-strategy-2020
Given the pressing need to recommence a house building programme , almost €3 billion in capital funding will be provided in support of the Social Housing Strategy through the Government’s Capital Plan - Building on Recovery: Infrastructure and Capital Investment 2016-202. The Capital Plan is available at the following link:
http://www.per.gov.ie/wp-content/uploads/Capital-Plan.pdf
Over 13,000 social housing units were delivered in 2015, the first full year of implementation of the Strategy. This represents an 86% increase in unit delivery above 2014. It was achieved in a very difficult operating environment and represents a good start to the implementation the Strategy. The targets for 2016 are again ambitious and I expect that over 17,000 social housing units will be provided this year.
In January, in collaboration with the Housing Agency, I published the Social Housing Output in 2015 report, detailing how the 13,000 units were delivered across all the social housing programmes in 2015. The report, together with data on the breakdown of output, across all social housing delivery programmes, by local authority, is available on my Department’s website at the following link:
http://www.environ.ie/housing/social-housing/social-and-affordble/overall-social-housing-provision
Social housing cannot be viewed in isolation from the wider housing system. The construction, and particularly residential construction, industry in Ireland is taking time to recover from the economic downturn and consequently supply from that sector is lagging significantly behind demand. Private market housing is currently delivering circa 50% of the estimated annual requirement of 25,000 dwellings.
The Housing Actions Report, which was published today, provides further information on thirty-one major actions taken across the housing spectrum in the past twenty-one months to increase the supply of housing, including social housing. The report is available on my Department’s website at
http://www.environ.ie/housing/activity/laying-foundations-housing-action-report
