New Minister for Housing Simon Coveney has said €46 million per year is being spent on hotels for families who do not have a home.
“That’s not right, we can and we will find more suitable accommodation,” he said.
He told RTÉ’s Today with Sean O’Rourke show the Government is about to undertake “the biggest social housing building programme that Ireland has ever seen”.
Mr Coveney has previously said his priority with his new brief was tackling homelessness, including rough sleeping and the housing of families in hostel and hotel accommodation unsuited to their needs, and that he planned to meet charities, voluntary agencies and local authorities this week to hear their views.
He had said the housing shortage needed to be addressed by increasing housing supply, and Ireland needed to increase its current building rate of 12,000 housing units a year to more than 30,000 to make up for almost a decade when few houses were built.
He believed it would be possible to achieve this in two to three years but it would need to be sustained for five to 10 years to make up for the deficit. The recession had brought house-building to a virtual halt.
On Wednesday he said he was committed to putting a new housing strategy in place, and acknowledged previous Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly “did do a lot” in this respect.
‘National emergency’
“I need to continue and intensify that work - I’m not afraid of being radical, if that’s necessary. What’s happening at present is a national emergency. It needs an appropriate response.
“We are going to undertake probably the biggest social housing build programme that Ireland has ever seen over the next five years.
“That needs to happen quickly - people don’t need to hear me talking about solutions that will take place in 2018 and 2019.”
The Minister said he would be meeting with the chief executives of local authorities on Thursday to talk through what they need “to ensure they can spend the money we are going to make available to them. We are going to make more available to them not only to build houses, but also to open up sites.
“If necessary I will be encouraging them to use emergency powers to effectively fast track the planning system.
“We need to build homes quickly, but we need to ensure that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past and that they’re not built in the wrong place, and [are built] to the right quality and standards.”
He said there will be 18,000 new housing units by the end of 2017 through a combination of approaches. These would not be 18,000 new builds, and the accommodation would come through a combination of assistance payments, rental accommodation scheme payments and dealing with the voids issue.
“We need to use new technologies that will allow us build houses much more quickly than in the past - we need to release a significant house-building programme across the private sector...
“We have a target of 35,000 units by the end 2020. Within the Programme for Government is a statement of ambition of what we intend to do. An action plan that we intend to deliver.
He said the Government had already committed €4 billion to the social housing programme between now and end-2020 - “we are also going to be working with organisations like Nama and the private sector to provide much more housing”.
“The fundamental problem is that we don’t have enough homes in Ireland. We need to be building 25,000 houses a year. Nothing like that has been built in the last decade.”
Mr Coveney said he had been offered the choice of a number of Ministries by the Taoiseach, and opted for Housing.
“Some people have accused me of having a political death wish. It is a very controversial, but also a very important ministry in terms of housing in particular, but also water.
“I think this is the most important policy area of this Government.”