Social housing still falling short, says charity

Social housing is still falling far short of the level required, a leading homeless charity has claimed.

Despite the Government's announcement yesterday that that construction of social housing had reached a 20-year high, Focus Ireland says over 43,000 households remain on local authority waiting lists.

The group's chief executive Declan Jones said the reality is that "we are falling significantly short of the level of social housing development needed".

He said the Government now has to show greater ambition along with significant additional capital investment if these problems are to be tackled more effectively. "We need to rethink our attitudes towards social housing," he added.

Mr Jones called for greater political and public support to make housing the most marginalised families and individuals in Irish society a priority.

Figures released from the Department of Environment yesterday show that nearly 10,000 social and affordable units built last year. The figure amounted to just under 12 per cent of the 81,000 apartments and houses built in the State overall in 2005.

Of the 6,500 social units, 5,100 were built or acquired by local authorities, an increase of 500 on 2004. The remainder were constructed by voluntary housing associations.

Minister of State with responsibility for housing Noel Ahern said there had been a seven per cent increase in 2005 in the provision of housing for lower income families on the previous year.

He said a further 8,500 local authority homes were under construction.