From 2017 to 2020 Kerry County Council delivered 159 units of housing. These houses are built to an exceptionally high standard by local builders in good locations. From 2021 to 2022 Kerry County Council, under the stewardship of our CEO, Ms Moira Murrell, and the director of housing, Mr. Martin O'Donoghue, plans to deliver a further 278 units. As of November 2020 there were 2,183 households qualified for social housing in Kerry, more than 80% of which are waiting for one-bedroom and two-bedroom style housing units. Over the next two years more than 40% of Kerry County Council's new builds will be one-bedroom and two-bedroom housing. Kerry County Council could do a lot more if given more resources. It could construct further housing. It could buy housing units that might become available from the private sector if they could be bought at a prudent and affordable price, which might actually be a lesser price than it would cost to build new. In other parts of the country, one might hear other politicians from all sides of the House objecting to houses in their constituencies. In Kerry, we need housing and we want it. Our politicians are all of the one voice. Our local authority members and county councillors, from all parties and none, are of the one voice.

They want to take care of the housing needs of the people of Kerry which are immense. In a county the size of Kerry to have 2,183 people awaiting housing is not the fault of our local authority. Whenever the Kerry County Council housing department has been given funding, we spent it expeditiously and got value for money, either through purchasing or new builds.

As I always say, Kerry is better than everywhere else. We have better building contractors than anywhere else. We have extremely efficient local builders and companies that employ local people which in turn generates money for the local and national economy. I ask the Taoiseach to take into account that we must focus. Great strides have been made on three-bedroom houses and other such family units. We now need to concentrate on one-bedroom and two-bedroom accommodation in County Kerry to take care of the great need we have.

I thank the Deputy for raising a very important issue, one on which I share his thoughts. He knows that as a humble Cork man, I have always been a great admirer of the literary creativity and innovative character of Kerry people. I have been in awe of the genius of the Kerry DNA for a long time, as a neighbour across the county bounds.

The Government has a target of 255 direct builds in County Kerry and 70 leases for 2021. If the Deputy can go back to Kerry County Council and it can do more, I will talk to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage who really wants local authorities to come back to him saying they can do more. The more shovel-ready projects on housing there are, the more responsive the Government will be in getting them done.

The Deputy is right; the housing lists are too long. Too many people are waiting too long for social and private housing. It is a crisis that has been compounded by Covid, meaning that for the moment construction has slowed down considerably. There is a big budget this year for housing. We will be responsive to what the Deputy has just said regarding the capacity of the council to do more than the targets. It is a target at the moment; the council allocation is not capped at 255. Last year the Minister cut through a significant amount of red tape by introducing a single-stage process with up to €6 million which will help accelerate delivery. It means that the local authority can devise projects up to that scale without needing to get sanction from the Department at every stage.

Kerry County Council may have more capacity in terms of voids. Last year the Minister allocated €56.4 million to bring 3,607 vacant homes back into productive use across the country within the social housing stock. That was the highest ever yearly spend on voids and the highest number of homes to be refurbished under the voids programme. It was done under the July stimulus programme. Kerry County Council got approximately €991,000 under that voids programme. That enabled the refurbishment of about 50 extra social housing units for the purpose of re-letting them out to individuals and families on the list. We expect similar measures this year on voids across the country, including in Kerry. Again, the Deputy could alert his local authority to that allocation. We need to make up lost ground now because of Covid-19 which was unavoidable.

I appreciate the prioritisation the Deputy is giving to this issue. We are open to any innovative schemes. For example, I note that in some instances, houses are falling by the wayside for various reasons. I do not understand why we cannot sometimes intervene to acquire a house and refurbish it. It might have been idle for a year or two and getting into disrepair. We have all passed them on boreens and roads throughout the countryside and they would make fine homes for people. We are very much open to respond to initiatives from the local authority.

I welcome what I consider to be a very positive and sound response from the Taoiseach. It certainly will be relayed to the management of Kerry County Council. When we are talking about statistics, I like to humanise them. We have 770 males and 422 females. We have 336 females with a dependant and 98 males with a dependant. We have 165 couples. We have 298 couples with dependants or two or more adults with or without dependants. These are all people who need housing and that is why it is right for us to raise the issue here today and to talk about it.

I use the opportunity to thank several people who go above and beyond the call of duty every day in our local authority. I refer to the people who work in our housing department, including the clerk of works who oversees projects on the ground, the engineers working in the housing department, and the ladies and men who deal with the processing of housing applications, disabled persons grants, essential repair grants and mobility aids grants. They know every day when they answer the phone, they are dealing with a human being who needs help. I thank the workers in the housing department in Kerry County Council. I also compliment the private contractors, their foremen, workers, subcontractors and tradesmen who work to very high standards and whose work also deserves to be recognised.

I thank the Deputy for his affirmation of all those who work in the housing department in Kerry County Council and in the construction industry more generally. Yesterday I met representatives from the industry to discuss the degree to which they have developed innovative approaches to safety in the workplace, particularly during the Covid pandemic. The return-to-work protocol became the benchmark for other sectors. The unions were particularly proactive in that regard and made a very positive contribution to that forum under the Labour Employer Economic Forum, LEEF, process which is a very good example of partnership.

The Deputy spoke about the need for one-bedroom and two-bedroom units. At the moment we are making some progress in taking families out of homelessness, but overall the majority of those who are homeless are single people. We need to accelerate very significantly the number of one-bedroom and two-bedroom units across the country. That would help many single people or people with smaller households to secure housing. There is a need for much more of that type of provision to deal with homelessness in an effective and critical-mass way and also then to deal with the wider issue of the social housing list.