Clare Daly (Dublin North, United Left) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted that Fianna Fáil has robbed some of the points originally raised by Deputy Wallace a long time ago. The Government should compel the National Asset Management Agency, NAMA, to allocate at least 50% of the 20,000 units it is providing for social housing. Perhaps one of the reasons the Government is failing to address that sensible and practical solution to the delivery of 10,000 units is that it is deliberately masking and hiding the figures. The point made by Deputy Catherine Murphy about this mythical 13,000 social housing units delivered in 2015 must be tackled, because it is mentioned everywhere. The Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Coffey, on "Clair Byrne Live" last week talked about 13,000 additional housing units. In the programme for Government scorecard the Government boasted about delivering 13,000 units, although it did not have the neck to call them "new". Then the Taoiseach said in the House that there was money on the table, provided by the Government, to build 110,000 new social housing units. That is patently and utterly untrue. The Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, told us this morning that 13,000 keys had been given to people, which is an increase of 86% on the previous year. That is simply not the case.

I will examine the figures. Of the 13,000, a total of 5,680 were households that moved from rent supplement to HAP. Calling something a different name is not delivering new social housing units. In fact, in many instances it was the same private landlords. A total of 1,644 of the 13,000 units were people who moved to the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, as they do every year. Indeed, the number was a little down on the previous year. That is certainly not new social housing. If one adds the RAS and HAP figures, it amounts to 7,324 or 56% of the 13,000. That cannot be called new social housing units. They are private rentals. In the case of voids, these are units in existing housing stock that were run down. That is not new social housing, and people will see through it.

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