Vol. 438 No. 5
77 Mr. Currie asked the Minister for the Environment whether he has satisfied himself that sufficient information is available on housing need; whether in this context he will introduce a house condition survey; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
A considerable amount of information is available on housing need from a variety of sources, including the assessments by housing authorities of the need for local authority housing, estimates by housing authorities of the total housing requirements of their areas, surveys of the housing stock and other assessments and analyses carried out from time to time. My Department has recently commissioned the Economic and Social Research Institute to carry out an analysis and evaluation of the results of the 1993 local authority housing need assessments and I intend to publish the results of this in due course.
The last survey of the housing stock was carried out in 1990 and a copy of the results, published by the Environmental Research Unit, is available in the Oireachtas Library. These surveys have previously been carried out at seven to ten year intervals and I have no proposals to undertake a further survey at this stage.
