State needs to speed up delivery of social housing

Labour spokesperson on Housing, Jan O’Sullivan TD, has said the State needs to increase its social housing targets and not continue to rely so heavily on the private sector to provide social and affordable homes.

Deputy O’Sullivan said:

“The latest figures on Social Housing Delivery Targets show that the majority of new social housing set to come on stream this year will come from the private sector.

“The reality is that the State is not building enough social housing off its own bat and is still relying too heavily on the private sector.

“It is also clear from the pace of delivery of social homes that the whole process needs to be simplified, as it is taking too long between the proposal to build and actual delivery.

“It is taking at least three years for social housing to be delivered and we need to be aiming to cut this delay time by at least half.

“Despite the Government’s positive spin on these figures, it is still not delivering enough social and affordable housing to meet the urgent demand.

“There is enough readily available land on which to build, such as the 700 publicly owned sites that have already identified.

“If there was ever a ‘rainy day’ to increase capital expenditure, this housing crisis is it, and resources shouldn’t be an object in the provision of badly needed homes.”