In conjunction with the Business Committee, the Speaker has given leave to Carál Ní Chuilín to raise the matter of housing in North Belfast. I call Carál Ní Chuilín, who has up to 15 minutes.

A LeasCheann Comhairle, can we wait for a couple of minutes to allow the Communities Minister to arrive? We are at least an hour early. Is that possible?

I am fully in agreement that it is OK to take our ease for a few moments. If Members are happy with that, I certainly am.

We will resume. Go ahead.

Thank you, a LeasCheann Comhairle. For your benefit, Minister, I did not want to start until you were here, so I asked for us to wait for a couple of minutes. I put on record my appreciation of your being here. I suspect that this is an issue that you are very interested in. I know that your party colleague Phillip Brett is, and, when Brian is here, he will be as well. I see that you have at least one of your officials there: David Polley. He will probably have you well briefed on housing statistics.

North Belfast is normally in the top three or four areas of greatest housing stress. I think that the concern for us all is that, as well as housing supply, there are many issues, but it is certainly about getting enough land to build houses where they are needed. Every part of the constituency needs homes. It is not just the part that I represent, live in or whatever; it is accepted that the need is everywhere. I think that my colleagues from North Belfast will appreciate that there are stubborn parts of North Belfast that have not meaningfully shifted. I hope that we take a collegial approach to that.

One of the issues that have exercised many people across most, but not all, of the parties in Belfast City Council is the emergence of many managed student accommodation blocks. Initially, when we asked, for example, Ulster University and Queen's University — it was less Queen's and more Ulster — about the need for student beds in the city centre, they told us that it was 1,500. That figure has gone up to 15,000. I know that because I attended planning appeals against managed student accommodation in Union Street. Those were the figures that were put on the record.

There was not only a perception but a belief that any available land in that area had been earmarked under different housing strategies for potential social housing. When I was CAL Minister, we looked at whether land behind the central library could run contiguously. We wanted to use the "Public land for public housing" approach, where we could try to bring pockets of land together for housing. That was not achieved, certainly with DCAL, but it certainly was in terms of plot 8, which was DFC's, and the Belfast City Council piece of land in that area, which is now the strategic site assessment. The context is that any bit of land that could be used for development — there is a need for older people's housing, folds and different things— is gobbled up by private developers. We are asking for the Department, along with the Housing Executive but under your leadership in the Department, to be the advocate for housing need across our part of the constituency.

You have probably seen the figures, because I asked the questions. In North Belfast, there are around 4,400 applicants on the housing waiting list. Those figures are from 2022-23. A total of 3,479 are deemed to be living in housing stress, yet the estimate is that just 655 homes have been built. Ironically and disappointingly, they are not always in the areas of the constituencies that we represent. We are glad that those houses are built; we are just saying that they are not enough, and they are certainly not in the areas of greatest demand.

In relation to housing in North Belfast — I know that colleagues have experienced this across the piece — you would have had the potential of a supply coming from the private rented sector. That is not the case any more. In fact, I dealt with a constituent last Friday who works in the Mater Hospital and is paying almost £900 per month for accommodation in north Belfast. She is having to leave. She was successful in getting accommodation elsewhere, but she considers herself to be a member of the Catholic community and her kids go to secondary school, and the affordable property was in an area where children would not go to Catholic post-primary schools. She is concerned. It is not to say that people are deliberately setting out. She is rearing grown-up teenagers, and she is just concerned. Do you know what the difference in rent is? £450 per month.

There are lots of reasons why the supply has not been maintained. Some landlords just cannot afford it. If it is a family home, they are selling it on; for others, it is just not the market for them. I have spoken to, I think, every housing association about whether they had approached the Department or, in particular, the Housing Executive to ask whether they had land or whether they could go into joint ventures with other housing associations in the provision of social housing in North Belfast.

As with everything, if you get a lot of people in one room, they have a list of demands. The issue and the opportunity for us is whether we can explore the local development plans (LDPs) coming from the councils. That will be the biggest change in planning policy for probably a generation, but there may be opportunities through that. Percentage limits were put on people buying a home, whereby a percentage of those homes could be social and vice versa. However, there are opportunities for what private developers and housing associations can do under the LDP.

I know that councils do not have development powers — those powers were removed over 50 years ago — but I would like the Department to explore what can be done with local government, with all the equality protections that are there with the common selection scheme. To be frank, we are running out of land and road in North Belfast. There are three and four generations now living under one roof, and it is horrible. It is horrible for the kids, and it is horrible for the families.

I know that the Minister's officials will say something different about this. It is not that they are disagreeable — I have had this out with them, and they disagree — but housing associations tell me that the amendment of article 15 of the Housing Order 1992 prevents them from building homes for sale. They are saying that, if they could build homes for sale within their envelope of providing social houses, they could put that back in and that could be used for a bigger pot.

Some can borrow additional money, but it always comes back to a lack of land, so, even if they had the money, housing associations are not getting enough land. We therefore may need to look at vesting. I ask the Minister and his officials not so much to look at vesting, because it is always a last resort, but to have discussions with Belfast City Council and Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council and with other councils on the outskirts of North Belfast, or with the Belfast Harbour Commissioners, to see what else we can do.

I declare an interest. When I was Minister for Communities, I put this in my housing statement of November 2020. We looked at potentially ring-fencing areas of highest need. We did so to try to build homes in order to reduce homelessness. It is not an artificial way of doing so, because it works. Doing that had been removed by the SDLP Minister in 2010 and 2011.

Minister, if you can, I also want you to look at different ways in which we can try to relieve homelessness. It may mean holding a summit or pooling the best brains to look at what we can do. I do not want anyone to be trotting up to the courts to try to get a judicial review of why people have been on the housing waiting list for four years. Legally, anyone would be perfectly entitled to do that. If the Executive were to go to court, however, and say, "I hear what you are saying, but there is nothing that we can do", that is not something that any of us wants on our watch. I will leave it there.

Thank you for opening the debate. All other Members who are called to speak will have seven minutes.

I pay tribute to the Member for securing this important debate. Housing is very close to my heart and to that of all colleagues who represent North Belfast.

It is worth putting on record the lack of turnout at the debate from certain political quarters. No doubt they will be on Facebook at other times saying how they and their representatives are fighting the housing cause in North Belfast, yet when they have the opportunity to stand up in the House and fight for the people who elected us, their absence is notable. Rather than fight for people as representatives in this place, Facebook seems to be the way to go for them.

In May 2022, I unashamedly stood for election in North Belfast on the slogan of "Building back North Belfast" to end the years of dereliction and demolition and to rebuild, regenerate and once again regrow that proud community. What we have seen in recent months is to be welcomed. We have a record number of new social housing schemes, either on-site or now on-programme, but that cannot be the limit of our ambition. What it must be is the baseline for what all representatives for North Belfast want to see, which is access to good-quality, affordable housing for every single person in the constituency, regardless of the community in which they live.

My office — like every other in North Belfast, I am sure — is inundated day and daily with families who are at their wits' end. Children are forced to live in living rooms on their grandparents' sofas. There are three or four generations of a family in one house. Most disgracefully, we have communities and families being exploited by ruthless landlords. As Carál Ní Chuilín made very clear, we have some private landlord accommodation in an absolutely disgraceful condition across North Belfast, but that accommodation is the only option that a family has. A family will fear reporting a private landlord to the council in order to get environmental health improvements made to the property, because they know what will happen, which is that they will simply get their eviction notice. Another family will be moved into the property, and that family will then have nowhere to go.

The daily picture in my office, as I have said, is one of three and four generations of a family living in one household. There are people living in rental accommodation that is beyond unacceptable. Unfortunately, when people, particularly single males, come to our offices, we simply have to say to them, "You have no chance of getting a social house allocated to you in North Belfast". That is simply not what we, as elected representatives, want to say to our people. What we cannot do, however, is build up their expectations or hold wrong views that the situation is going to change without there being an intensive investment programme. That is the simple reality that all elected representatives in North Belfast are having to tell people. Young people do not have the option of staying in their homes. Proud communities are being broken up, and people are being forced to move to other parts of the city or to neighbouring boroughs.

For me, the Department for Communities is the most important Department in the Executive. That was why I was so delighted that our party chose that Department, because the work that we can do there to change lives and families is unparalleled. Be it the Rathcoole, Oldpark, Glengormley or Ligonel areas, on the Shore Road or in the New Lodge, the issues faced by every person are exactly the same. All they want is to have good-quality, affordable and secure housing for their families. As a modern society, how can we deny them those basic requirements? That is why all of us who represent North Belfast speak with one voice, I think, on this issue. We want to see proper investment in social and affordable housing throughout the constituency.

It would be remiss of me not to pay tribute to what I call my second family in North Belfast: the Housing Executive. Sometimes I think that I speak to its staff more than they get to speak to their own families. I pay tribute to them and recognise the Shankill office, the north Belfast office and the Newtownabbey 1 and Newtownabbey 2 offices, which cover North Belfast. They give the utmost professionalism and dedication to their jobs because they care about the communities in North Belfast and want to see our people accessing the homes that they need and deserve.

The thing that shows that the housing crisis in North Belfast continues to be exacerbated is the points level at which houses are currently being allocated. I remember that, when I was first elected 10 years ago in North Belfast, you could get a house at 80 or 90 points. Now, you are talking about 200 or 220 points, and, for many people, getting to that level is simply impossible. The only route by which people are getting those points is through intimidation points. Those people move in and disrupt communities, and then we have a constant cycle where houses are destroyed and taken out of the social housing stock for many months to be repaired, and the cycle continues. I hope that the Minister will be able to refer to his ongoing review on that issue, because the intimidation points issue simply needs to be looked at.

What follows will be a rare of example of me offering the Minister some advice on how he may be able to sort out some of the housing issues in North Belfast. First, allow the Housing Executive to build houses again in Northern Ireland. North Belfast has eight excellent sites that remain in the Housing Executive's ownership, which, if it had the ability to build houses itself, would go some way to meeting the housing demand in North Belfast. Secondly, continue to extend the building successful communities programme, which has been a success in lower Oldpark and in the Gainsborough/Mountcollyer area, and other parts of North Belfast would benefit from that. Thirdly, the tower block strategy should be abandoned by the Minister. How can we go about telling people that we have a housing crisis in North Belfast but that we are going to knock down 50 or 60 houses at one site without being able to replace them? In my view, that is not acceptable. Before I was elected to the Assembly, I served as a non-executive member of the Housing Executive board, and I made it clear that such an action would simply exacerbate the housing crisis. I hope that the Minister will continue to recognise that tower blocks have an important role to play in North Belfast and that they should be invested in and made to be family homes for the people of North Belfast, who deserve to continue to live in their communities.

I thank Carál Ní Chuilín for securing this Adjournment debate, and I welcome the Minister to the debate. It is my first Adjournment debate since being elected as an MLA, so I am really glad that it is on housing in North Belfast. I hope that the Minister will forgive me if I sometimes stray into issues that might be thought to be unrelated to housing but that I think exacerbate the issue in North Belfast. I will touch on some of the points that have already been made rather than repeating everything.

We have seen managed student accommodation in North Belfast, particularly with the migration of Ulster University to the city centre and the north Belfast area. It is important to note, however, that residents there have been more content than those in other areas of Belfast in which there is managed student accommodation. I place on the record that it is better to have that managed accommodation, but we also need to have balance. That also brings in the issue about land that was previously earmarked for housing, which the first Member to speak mentioned. Where we differ in opinion is on the issue of shared housing. By "shared housing", I do not just mean housing for those from different backgrounds; I mean shared housing in its totality — private, public, commercial etc. We cannot simply continue to build housing in areas where land is cheapest and where there is nothing else around for the people who are eventually put into those houses. We need to build houses in areas that can become communities so that people can take pride in their areas.

I commend housing associations for their work over the past decade in building new housing, particularly in the Limestone Road area. The houses built there by Newington Housing Association were of fantastic quality, and the residents were exceptionally happy with them. Equally, it is important to note that the Housing Executive is again building houses in North Belfast, along the Ballysillan Road. It is great to see houses being built there again; it is just unfortunate that the number is in single digits. I do not doubt that, when it comes to allocating those houses, it will be chaotic for the Housing Executive, because there are so few houses and so many people who deserve to have a house in that area.

I want to touch on the reform of the allocation points. I agree that we need to reform the system to ensure that it is fair. I do not doubt that every Member is in the same boat as I am in my constituency office with housing issues, which are the most stressful, accounting for the highest volume of cases. I have a family in North Belfast who have over 210 points, but, because of the type of house that they need due to having children with special needs, they have been left homeless for over four years. At one point, they were moved into temporary accommodation, which is yet another issue. Temporary accommodation for families is often far outside North Belfast. We have families who can no longer send their children to school because their temporary accommodation is out by the airport, for example, and the school is in inner-city North Belfast. That is not acceptable. I understand that there is not enough housing, but it simply cannot go on any longer. We also need to address the reasons why people are in housing crisis. We, ultimately, need the anti-poverty strategy and to address poverty in its entirety.

The issue of derelict buildings was addressed by the previous Member to speak, and Carál raised the vesting issue. It is important that the Communities Minister works with the AERA Minister to look at what we can do about derelict and dilapidated buildings. There is no doubt that the Housing Executive could use every single one of them — it could upgrade them and put families in them. I hope that we can progress that issue, too.

Tower blocks were mentioned. My view differs from that of the previous Member to speak in that I do not think it is acceptable for families to be placed in tower blocks without access to community space. I agree that there needs to be a balance struck between what people want and what they prioritise, because, in North Belfast, we have more urban city living. We need to ensure that there is a balance, as with everything else.

I would like to touch on the crisis in maintenance work in North Belfast, which has not been mentioned. The Housing Executive is so overwhelmed that we are getting into a situation where — this is not just because of COVID, so it cannot be the excuse any longer — the maintenance of Housing Executive houses at the current level is not acceptable. People in their 80s who live in Housing Executive houses are having to rely on their children going to MLAs to try to get the work on their homes sped up. We are talking about people being left in the cold. We are also talking about family members whose asthma has worsened, for example, because of the mould that is growing in their Housing Executive property. We need to ensure that there is a review of all existing Housing Executive stock so that there are proper standards when it comes to damp and insulation.

I understand that the Housing Executive is working to address the maintenance backlog. However, if there was anything else that the Minister could do, such as putting his weight behind the call for more funding and allocations, so that the Housing Executive could speed that up, I know that many families in North Belfast would appreciate it, because, in the current situation, some are physically unable to use rooms in their homes, and such help would mean that they could remain in their homes.

I understand that this has been an issue since long before the current Minister's time in office, and it will take some time to assess and fix completely. However, every person on the housing waiting list is a person in need and in crisis. I hope that, because the matter has been brought to the Chamber today, the Minister will realise that it is on the agenda and is a priority of every MLA in North Belfast. Hopefully, we can progress housing and anti-poverty issues so that we can see more housing relief in North Belfast. I thank the Member for securing the Adjournment debate, and I look forward to the Minister's response.

I think that we are going to come to an agreement on the issue. I do not want to go over it all again, as the previous three Members to speak articulated it very well. I will emphasise a few of the issues, because they have been comprehensively covered, particularly the points system. That will be reviewed, but there needs to be a good consultation on that. There have been attempts to change the intimidation points system for quite a while, because it has been massively abused.

We know what the problem is. It was described earlier, and statistics were given, but, just to give one again, of 4,409 applications, 3,479 have come from people who are in housing stress, and only 655 homes have been built. I am not here to criticise the work of the Housing Executive and the housing associations; they have been doing good work, but we need to assist them. What can be done, Minister? I thank you for coming to the debate to listen, Minister. I know that your responsibility goes way beyond North Belfast, but we are talking about North Belfast. Of course, North Belfast is in the top four areas of need, along with west Belfast, Newry and Mourne, and Foyle.

Forgive me if I am repeating comments that have been made, but I think that some work was possibly done on the public land that the Department owns before you stepped into the role. I ask you to check that, because work that we can build on may already have been done. One of the big issues is the amount of land that there is for building in North Belfast in order to meet the current demand. There is also council-owned land to consider. Article 15 of the Housing Order has been mentioned, but we could look at amending it in order to make the process easier. At the moment, under the Belfast development plan, there is an aim to have 20% social and affordable housing. That figure is way too low. We need to increase that to give a fair amount of flexibility, which could make a big difference to what we are dealing with. I agree that there are different types of housing tenure, and we have looked at the different aspects of that. However, social and affordable housing is the area where the stress is most felt.

We should mention equality in the context of all that. In the past, we have had discussions about discrimination, where we have nearly said, "This is discrimination", and "That is discrimination". I think that if equality is built into the process, it affects people across the board. I am not just standing here as a republican or a nationalist talking about a particular area of North Belfast, but we should make equality central to that process to make sure that there is no discrimination, on whatever basis that might be. Maybe the Minister could also look at that, because we need to eliminate any type of discrimination.

I want to praise co-ownership, and maybe I need to expand on that. It has allowed people who would never be able to have a mortgage, especially at the moment, to have an opportunity, and it can make a big difference to their life. Carál mentioned a particular example, but there are many examples of the rents that are now being paid, and they are unbelievable. Co-ownership allows people to avoid the huge private rents in those circumstances. However, as I said, the problem goes much wider.

Ring fencing is one of those terms that people use a lot, and then all the Ministers start panicking, because it is very hard to get ring fencing. The type of ring fencing that we are talking about, however, is for the areas where there is the most need. If there is a budget, another thing that might be looked at is the ring-fencing of part of the budget for that. The whole thing, of course, is to have a budget with which to build houses and reduce housing stress. That is what this whole conversation is about.

A number of things were mentioned. One thing that comes up time and again and which never seems to go anywhere is vesting. Vesting is quite a hard negotiation — it normally involves negotiation — but it goes back to the fact that we have public land and are looking at what way to use it. Alongside that, I think that it was Nuala who mentioned the idea of this also being about refurbishment and maintenance. Examples have been given by other MLAs, and there will be more. Housing is the biggest issue that comes into my office, but there are also the issues of maintenance.

I am not attacking every landlord, but, when you start to deal with landlords, you see that there are some landlords with private properties in which there are young children and there is mould on the wall. I have been in and out of houses, flats and all that and have seen that. You see people trying to paint over that mould, and then you go back in six months to a year and see that the problem is still there. Accountability is something else to look at.

Downsizing: I say that as a person of my age. A lot of people want to downsize when everybody has flown the nest, and they go to the Housing Executive and say that they want to downsize. It is about giving attention to the appropriate place for them to downsize to. Going back a bit in history, it used to appal me that, when there were problem tenants around interface areas, there was a habit of moving them out of somewhere that they should have been moved out of, but of then concentrating them. Many a time, you landed in some interface area and, although you did not know how it started, found that there was a drink house and all of that.

For those people who are shifting down in size, it is about looking at the appropriateness of where they shift to. I think that it works on the basis that the Housing Executive does not approach them; they approach the Housing Executive. If you like, they are trying to do something to help the housing situation, so maybe a wee bit of extra thought should be given to where they might move to. Thought should be given to them going to an over-55s housing project, because that is what they are looking for.

I will finish off by talking about the tower blocks, which were mentioned. Around the blocks in New Lodge, after Grenfell, there were quite a number of moves to do with the danger there.

Will the Member bring his remarks to a close?

I will indeed.

It is about keeping an eye on that. This is the last thing. I mentioned Grenfell. I do not know whether this is within the Minister's bailiwick, but there is a debate because of the Victoria Square apartments. Six years is clearly not long enough when it comes to accountability for buildings. We need to look at that.

I welcome the debate, as others have done, and thank the Member for securing the debate on housing in North Belfast. I think that all five MLAs from North Belfast agree that this is the number-one issue that they deal with in the number of requests that come into their constituency offices. Those come from people who are seeking for us to help to push their case for social housing or who require repairs to social housing, as well as from people in private tenancies — a bit more work is needed, through the council, to make improvements to those properties — or from people who are being threatened with eviction and are in crisis. There is also the ongoing work that we all do to try to see derelict and housing opportunity sites developed. It typically takes years of work to bring a successful outcome in those cases.

Closely associated with that housing work is the work on the environment: alleyways, areas where there has been dumping and areas that are not being well maintained, where proper maintenance may not have been planned from the start.

First, the good news is that demand in North Belfast is increasing. That is good. It would be good, though, if that resulted in more social housing sites being brought forward. A frustration that we have is that, where that demand increases, we do not see the increase in the number of sites. That means that more people are frustrated and disappointed and asking us to lobby for them to help them to get social housing. I can remember the times when people could get a social house in greater Shankill or North Belfast with fewer than 50 points. Now, typically, you would need 150-plus to have any chance. As I said, we are constantly working with the Housing Executive, the Department, housing associations and private developers to see those sites brought forward. There are always complications along the way, but that work continues.

Yesterday's debate about water infrastructure was obviously very relevant to this. It is usually one of the main stumbling hurdles, with developers being told they have to build extra pipework to make the connections to the storm drains or the sewerage system and to keep the two systems separate, which is adding six-figure sums on to developments and making some small developments unviable. This issue will not go away for us, as an Assembly. We will have to address the need to invest in the waste water system and find a way to fund it to address the problem.

The Minister may be aware that, in the greater Shankill area, a lobby group has set up the BUILD project, which has mapped the number of derelict and housing opportunity sites, as I call them, in that area. Over 70 viable sites have been developed, some in private ownership and some in statutory ownership, with the Department for Communities, the Education Authority or other Government bodies. My colleagues and I have been working with the BUILD group to push for statutory bodies to meet, at a senior level, the Housing Executive, the Department for Communities and Belfast City Council and asking for a coordinated strategic plan to bring forward those sites. I sometimes hear of other areas where residents and communities are opposing social housing, but that is certainly not the experience in North Belfast. People want to see developments taking place, and we urge the Department to work where there is that willingness and see sites brought forward.

I agree with the comments about co-ownership. We have seen private developments where, in some areas, the market was not strong and developers were sitting on their land. We are now seeing sites moving forward and, in some of those areas, maybe a third of the houses are being sold through co-ownership. I agree that it provides a path into home ownership for people for whom, otherwise, the level of deposit or the mortgage interest rates would be prohibitive. I am a very strong supporter of the co-ownership scheme, and it is making that path possible for people.

I want to mention a particular area with opportunity sites, which is Glencairn. With the Forthriver ward now moving into North Belfast, it certainly has opportunity sites and is very much in need of a village plan. As the Minister may know, through Belfast City Council, we have most of the funding needed for a community facility at the heart of Glencairn. There is a need for remaining funding to cover the cost of that, but the area is crying out for a proper village plan and it has the opportunity sites within it to make that viable.

I also want to speak positively, as my colleague did, about the building successful communities programme, which was an initiative of a former Minister from my party who recognised that always waiting for the waiting lists to grow in certain areas to justify a development was a negative cycle and that there was a need to break that by putting some new housing into an area. It has been very successful in lower Shankill and Tigers Bay, and it also operated in lower Oldpark. The actual work in lower Shankill is continuing. As well as housing, there have been other developments with the new walkway and improvements to some publicly and privately owned sites with clawbacks in place. It has made a significant difference in those disadvantaged areas.

My colleague mentioned the Housing Executive staff. They work hard, and we need the vacancies in those public-facing positions to be filled.

In North Belfast, we have a number of interfaces. In places, it is like a patchwork quilt. Some people almost try to deny that there are issues there, but there are, and, even though there has been a great improvement in those areas, things can flare up, so those issues need to be managed well.

I thank the Minister for his attendance today. I thank the Member opposite for securing the Adjournment debate, and I look forward to the Minister's contribution.

That completes the list of Members who wished to speak. I call the Minister to respond. The Minister has 10 minutes.

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I thank the Member for securing the debate, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to it. This is the first Adjournment debate for a number of Members, and it is the first time other than at Question Time that I have spoken in this place as Communities Minister. I am really pleased that we have the opportunity to talk about this matter, because I recognise many of the issues and concerns that the Member and others have raised about housing in North Belfast. The reality, of course, is that many of the issues are replicated throughout the country, but I recognise that they are particularly acute in North Belfast.

The issues are many: the demand for social homes and the increase in waiting lists; the availability and cost of private rented homes; growing homelessness pressures; the difficulty of delivering the necessary infrastructure and finding suitable land to provide new homes; and ensuring the quality and safety of existing homes. As the Minister with responsibility for housing, I know that those issues and concerns are not faced in just one constituency: they exist in our cities and towns, urban and rural, and the need and demand for good, affordable and sustainable homes is currently not being met. Housing in all places is a priority for me, and it should be a priority across the Executive. For that reason, housing must be considered as a whole system, and there must be a collective commitment and action across government, alongside private-sector and community and voluntary sector partners.

The barriers are well rehearsed. Right now, thousands of homes are not being built because of limitations on water infrastructure. Getting suitable land can be difficult. The planning process can significantly impact on delivery. As a result, thousands of people struggle to find a suitable home, and that problem, unfortunately, is only getting worse. We cannot end up like Dublin or London, where the failures of housing supply mean that economic growth benefits only the property-owning few and where people with good jobs struggle to put a roof over their head, never mind buy their own home.

Removing those barriers requires coordinated action and investment across the Executive; otherwise, they will only squeeze housing supply further. The Executive have to deliver. That means focusing on what is important, and that includes providing homes for our people. The whole-system approach is fundamental to the draft housing supply strategy on which I am working. It will provide the framework to bring about the system changes that we need. I will prioritise putting that much-needed strategy in place. We have to be clear, however, that it will work only if we have buy-in from other Departments that prioritises the changes that we need to make in order to deliver the homes that we need.

My second priority is to deliver more social homes. We need more social housing. The year before last, we started 1,950 homes. In the past financial year, over 1,500 homes were started in partnership with the Housing Executive and housing associations. I am pleased that the target was met, but 1,500 homes is not enough. We need to protect the social homes that we have and start about 2,500 houses a year. I commit now to keep building more homes where they are needed. Despite all the other financial pressures, I will continue to spend most of my capital budget on new social homes. I want us to be in a position to build 35,000 more homes over the next 15 years. Over the next few years, I will put the foundations of that ambitious programme in place, working to increase the rate at which we build homes. The commitment to social home delivery can be seen in North Belfast, where, over the next three years, 809 social housing units are programmed to start under the social housing development programme.

My third priority is to take action to protect the Housing Executive so that it can continue to provide decent homes for our households and families. Sometimes, I think that the issue has been talked about for so long that people forget how important it is, or maybe the numbers seem so big or the Housing Executive seems such an integral part of our lives that we cannot get our heads around the real danger that it might fail. Given the current state of its homes and rental income, the Housing Executive has warned that some of its homes might become unfit for people to live in. We cannot accept a decline in the quality and quantity of our social housing. That would be catastrophic for our communities and our towns and cities, but, most importantly, it would be catastrophic for tens of thousands of people who will never be able to get a social home. I want to prioritise finding a solution that will place the Housing Executive on a sustainable financial footing, and getting that done is really important for me. It will enable additional, much-needed investment to improve the quality and enhance the energy efficiency of the Housing Executive's homes. An example of driving such innovation forward can be seen already in North Belfast, where, as part of a pilot, the Housing Executive is building six semi-detached homes at Sunningdale Gardens. They will really help in terms of lower heating bills, savings from reduced fuel costs and more comfortable homes.

The next issue that I want to address is improving the response to homelessness. That sector is under significant strain, manifested by the rapid increase in the need for temporary accommodation. I want to make sure that homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurrent. I want to support a shift to prevention, but we have an immediate issue with the use of temporary accommodation. That is money not being spent on homelessness prevention or supported housing schemes. Staying in insecure temporary accommodation is not good enough for families and puts them, especially children, under huge strain and pressure. It will take time to achieve these ambitions, so our short-term focus must be on continuing to support those currently in crisis.

I want to mention the Supporting People scheme. High-quality, effective housing support can make a real difference to people's lives and enable them to live more independently in the community. I have been out and about and have seen fantastic examples of the difference that that support can make in people's lives. That is why I made the decision last month to approve an additional £3 million in funding for the programme for the financial year. That additional funding is an acknowledgement of the need that exists in our society.

In the couple of minutes that I have left, I will turn to some of the comments that Members have made. First of all, Ms Ní Chuilín asked me to be the advocate for housing need, and I hope that I have, to some extent, demonstrated that I understand and am determined to resolve some of the issues to make sure that we do not find ourselves in the position that others do. She highlighted clearly the situation that we find ourselves in, with a demand for 4,400 homes in the last financial year but only 655 new homes built. She is absolutely right to highlight the fact that local development plans will play an important part, but it is essential that we take a whole-of-government and a holistic approach to the issue to make sure that, essentially, we make it easier for people to get the land and build new homes on that land.

Mr Brett talked about ambition, and it is really important that we are ambitious in this area because the demand and the need is so great. He also raised the issue of the parties that are absent today. I will not go into that in too much detail other than to say that it is surprising that so many parties have not turned up to take part in the debate, which is so important, not just for this constituency but across Northern Ireland. I agree with what he said about intimidation points and the need for that system to be reviewed. I will receive the report and research on that, and I have great sympathy with the points that he made. He raised issues in relation to tower blocks as well. When we have such housing need, it does not make sense for us to remove so many potential homes for people if we are not in a position to replace them. Therefore, we will, of course, consider that issue.

Miss McAllister was absolutely right to raise the anti-poverty strategy; it is an important issue. The issues that she raised around derelict buildings will be part of the overall housing supply strategy. We have to make sure that we can build new homes but that we also look at the homes that are in existence and bring them up to an appropriate standard.

Mr Kelly talked about identifying land. We are looking at land that the Department holds, as well as other public land, so that we can make the most of it. He mentioned co-ownership, and one of the first things that I did was raise the co-ownership limit in Northern Ireland. I will have more to say in the coming days on the building safety issues that he raised.

I agree with a number of the comments that Mr Kingston made, which others raised as well. It is important that we see more social housing sites being brought forward so that we can make sure that we are addressing the issue by having the land and making sure that we are able to build on it.

I am committed to a genuinely ambitious and strategic programme of work that will deliver results for people. I will need support from Executive colleagues in order to do that. I am not here to tinker around the edges. I want to see thousands more affordable homes being built and lived in over the next three years, and I hope that I will have the support of other parties to do that.

Minister, thank you for that response, and thank you, Members.

Adjourned at 4.41 pm.