I call Deputy Munster.
Housing for All: Statements (Resumed)
Coverage today by RTÉ of leaked details of the report of the Housing Commission laid bare the absolute disaster that is this Government's housing policy and the Minister himself. The report was compiled by leading experts and practitioners in the State and in it they are clearing saying the plan has failed. Calling for a "radical strategic reset" of housing policy is another way of saying that successive Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil Governments have been disastrous for housing.
The facts on the ground speak for themselves. In County Louth, more than 5,000 people are on the housing waiting list. Some of these people have been on the housing waiting list for more than a decade. Let us see what 12 years of Fine Gael, eight years of Fianna Fáil alongside them and the Minister's time in his portfolio have given us. There has been a 50% increase in house prices, a 100% increase in rents and a 500% rise in child homelessness. When Fine Gael entered government, there were 3,000 people homeless. Now, in 2024, under the watch of the Minister, we have 4,000 children homeless and almost 14,000 people homeless overall. These numbers are shocking and a shameful legacy is being left behind.
This report is actually calling out this mismanagement. It is not possible for the Minister and the Government to hide behind bluster and nonsense anymore. This failure is as clear as day. This is an emergency and needs an emergency response. It proves that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael cannot be trusted with housing. Since 2011 they have spent almost €10 billion of taxpayers' moneys on subsidies to landlords. This €10 billion is the equivalent of 40,000 permanent homes for families and it has gone straight into the pockets of your friends, the landlords. Another €3.24 billion has been spent on long-term leasing. Some of these leases will cost the State €600,000 each and it will not even own the properties in the end. This is taxpayers' money going down the Swanee. The Government is mismanaging public money, its housing plan is not working and it has no plan B. The only solution to the housing crisis is a change in government and the election of a Sinn Féin-led Government that will prioritise housing, understand that the State is central to the management of housing and that everyone has a right to a home. This is the only way things will change.
I wish to raise two issues in respect of this matter with the Minister. I welcomed the Minister to County Leitrim yesterday. We had a good morning there and several housing projects were opened in Drumshanbo and Ballinamore.
It was welcome and excellent to see it happen. We need to see more of it throughout the country. That is the real problem. I want to make a point that is often made in here about people objecting to houses. We opened those houses in Ballinamore. At the municipal district meeting two of the councillors there actually voted against those houses being built. One was the Fianna Fáil councillor, Caillian Ellis, the other was Fine Gael councillor, Ita Reynolds Flynn. It was great to see them there and it is great that they changed their minds. Hopefully we will see more of that.
In regard to rents, according to Daft.ie today there is an average rise of 4.9% in the country. In Sligo, in the year to date, there is an increase of 12.4% in rents. In Leitrim since last year the figure is 9.3%. Rents are rising for people renting houses in rural areas, well outside of Dublin and the metropolis. That is well outside the norm. That is because, even in those areas, places to live are getting more and more scarce. People renting a house in Sligo are paying €300 more than renters who are already in the county. It is the same situation across Leitrim and other rural counties as well.
We need to get a grip on the situation in regard to rent for people. We also need to get a grip on the situation of landlords who will not take HAP. There are thousands of landlords who are not taking HAP and are squeezing unfortunate people who are in a situation where they need assistance to be able to pay these exorbitant rents and those landlords simply will not take them. Some measures need to be put in place to ensure that can be controlled. I firmly believe that will not be controlled by this Government because it seems to be hand in glove with the large retail landlord sector which has dominated the market. We all know there are small landlords who provide a good service, who are part of the system and who, generally, if the tenant is working well with them, work well for the tenant. We know that. However, there is another sector of landlords who are unscrupulous in the way they deal with decent people who are trying to find a place to live. They evict tenants and then put the rent up. I have dealt with them in my constituency. I am sure the Minister has dealt with them in his as well. We need to recognise that is a major part of the problem and the Government needs to get to grips with it. The only way the Government will get to grips that in my view is when we have a change of Government.
My apologies to Deputies O'Connor and Bruton. I should have called them both in the last slot. I now call Deputy James O'Connor.
Do not worry. All is forgiven. I raise the issue of the potential to add units to our annual new housing stock through modular accommodation. Modular housing was looked at as an emergency response initially to the Ukrainian crisis, and there has been much debate on it in the migration space. I am concerned that it seems this is not being viewed by the Department of housing as a potential addition to the housing supply when it comes to what it can do.
I have gone on site to see what has been done in Backweston. I walked away with an incredibly clear picture that these homes are not necessarily what might be believed by hearing the term "modular accommodation". The quality they are built to and the lifespan of these buildings is exceptional in terms of what has been provided with modern technology. They are built internally in enclosed spaces. The actual capacity and how quickly these can be delivered is, I believe, a missed opportunity.
We have done huge work to increase the supply of housing. To be fair, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, inherited a poisoned chalice. If anyone is being honest and decent here, they have to acknowledge that he has given it everything he has. I have seen in my own constituency particularly the increase in housing supply stock in such places as Carrigtwohill, Cobh and the Midleton area. We have projects in Youghal that are still in the pipeline but are on the way. I have seen a visible change in the number of housing units being built, which is welcome. Much of that is down to the hard work done in the Department by the Minister and his officials.
I am concerned about that missed opportunity to analyse what modular can do in terms of housing stock and supply. I have spoken to and engage with people in this industry. Within a 12-month period, outputs could be increased to 225 units per month. I am told that if a plan is put in place, that number could increase over a 36-month period to more than 500 houses per month. That is 500 homes for families. It would help to deal with such issues as hidden homelessness.
From the perspective of being a young person in the House here, I am also concerned that, seeing how acute the housing challenges are, for not only my own generation put indeed the one in front of me, this is not being looked at as a solution. Although the homes and how they are built, with the quality in terms of the internal fitting-out, are expensive, and I acknowledge they are hard to deliver for less than €350,000 per unit, they have a 60- to 100-year lifespan depending on the particular specification of the build. Why are we not looking at this in terms of providing potentially an additional 10,000 or 15,000 homes per year if the plan was put in place?
I am in no way critical in terms of what the Department has done in the ongoing work to expand the number of housing units being built. It is working quite well in my constituency. I highlight also that in Dublin city centre and in Cork we are seeing an increase in apartment construction. We need to look at the issue of ownership as well. That new two-bedroom units are being built is welcome, as seen in places like Cork Street coming into Dublin. However, between the canals I would like to see further focus on the delivery of affordable first-time homes for people to purchase, not build-to-rent. We see a huge amount of build-to-rent units being put in place. It is a very unfair burden for my generation of people to take on. They may be in their late 30s or early 40s, at the rate things are going, before they actually get out of that rent trap. God help them if they have children because of the additional costs that come with that. That is not the correct way for our society to be. People should have every chance, just as our parents and generations before them had, to work hard and eventually have the privilege of owning their own homes. For so many people paying those exceptionally high rents, that is beyond the reach of what is now considered normal. That is unacceptable. We need to do more to deal with that. I would like to see a huge increase in affordable homes for purchase, especially in Dublin and in Cork city. It is part of that cycle of people who come out of university and go working in city centres. Many people would like to do that for the first ten years of their careers then move home to have a family and settle in their respective home areas of the country. There is a missed opportunity to address that.
My two asks are, very simply, increasing home ownership of new units being built in high-density areas like Dublin and Cork and other areas, and recognising modular accommodation is not a false dawn. It is not something we should turn our eyes away from because of previous misconceptions of the quality of these builds. The technology has now caught up so much there is arguably a case that they are better than any concrete build, the direction they are going. There are good companies interested in coming here, or that are already here, so that if a plan were put in place by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage under the work of the good Minister here, they could actually deliver a substantial additional amount of units per annum.
It is encouraging to see 52,500 new starts up to the month of April and 30,000 mortgage approvals in the past 12 months to first-time buyers. In my own constituency we have a strong pipeline on State land of 2,500 social homes and 3,500 affordable homes. However, I want to underline a problem generally in Dublin. The Minister needs to examine carefully the situation emerging because, last year, 72% of the 12,500 homes built in Dublin were apartments. Of those under construction in Dublin, 82% are apartments. However, the number of those sold to first-time buyers or to any buyers was just 6%, or 500 homes. Equally, the pipeline of options with approvals is 51,000 apartments with approval in Dublin. The underlying difficulty is that to fund these multi-unit developments requires a level of funding and equity that makes it virtually impossible to sell to owner-occupiers. A figure of just 6% of the throughput going to owner-occupancy is ringing alarm bells for me. It is true that, increasingly, with the departure of the private investment funds, it is now the LDA and the approved housing bodies that are providing that equity to allow those homes to start.
I ask the Minister to examine carefully the details of both Project Tosaigh and the cities fund. There is supposed to be 10,000 homes coming from those, but from what the Minister said in the House and from what I see on the ground, virtually none are coming for affordable purchase in Dublin. Even the LDA, which is funding projects, sees only the capacity to fund cost rental. We need an initiative that allows bridging of the sale of apartments to owner-occupiers.
The reality is that those apartments will be sold in fives and tens over a long period, running to months before they are sold, and that is not a model the banks are willing to fund. That is the reality. We need to find a solution if we want to have compact development. We need compact development in the interest of climate sustainability and general sustainability of living. We cannot have people commuting from Mullingar as a solution. We have to find a way of creating the opportunity for owner-occupancy in compact development. That is not there and I do not think it is coming on a sufficient scale. While those two schemes are the right direction, I do not see the product of them actually producing for purchase. It is encouraging to see that the LDA and the approved housing bodies are involved in mobilising private investment. I see it in my own constituency. A number of the new private developments are actually in partnership with the LDA or the approved housing bodies. We will see cost-rental housing coming from those. There is going to be a gap, however.
There are two other points I want to make. The revision of the national planning framework cannot come soon enough. Of all the schemes for housing and apartments that started last year, 47% were in Dublin. Our ambition with the national development plan was to see double the rate of development of Cork, Galway, Waterford and Limerick as of Dublin. In fact, the reverse is the case. The rate of development in Dublin is double that in the other cities. Our strategy for relocating is not sufficiently effective. We need to look at the infrastructural investment that will make that possible. The impression I get is that it is hard to get financially successful development in those cities, whereas it is easier to do it in Dublin. We need to reverse that trend if we want to have sustainable development.
Finally, I ask the Minister to go back to the housing document for older people, to accommodate a population that is growing older, which was published back in 2019. We have simply failed to encourage rightsizing on any scale. Some 90% of people in my age category, and indeed younger people, are living in accommodation that is too large for their needs. However, there are no realistic options to change that. It is very difficult, for example, to convert a home from one unit to two household units. Rightsizing options are offered by Dublin City Council, but these contribution schemes where people can downsize and sell to the council are virtually non-existent. I believe we need a housing trust dedicated to nothing but developing this. It is a win-win situation if we free up accommodation that is underutilised, allow larger families to go into it and give people the opportunity to live securely in their own community. That is what people want. There is a need to look at those sorts of models. Those models were published back in 2019, but they need to be kickstarted by a dedicated agency that is committed to making that happen.
Deputy Boyd Barrett is sharing time with Deputy Barry.
Yes. I asked for this debate on the housing emergency weeks ago. I have been given four and a half minutes and the Minister has just left the Chamber. It sums up my frustration in trying to get across to the Government what an absolutely disastrous situation we are facing. The human misery that people are suffering because of this housing crisis never fails to shock me. Anybody who has been knocking on doors these past few weeks will have got it in spades. It is just household after household in which there is housing misery of one sort or another. Two or three generations of people are crammed into their parents' or grandparents' house. Mothers are in boxrooms with two or three children. People's mental health is collapsing as a result. They cannot get medical priority they deserve because they do not have enough doctor's evidence to say their mental health is collapsing as a result of the council not wanting to give them priority due to its lack of houses to give them. Some families may be heading towards their third Christmas in homeless hubs with their children. The misery just goes on and on, but what we hear from the Government is that its housing policy is working. The Housing Commission has now confirmed what the dogs in the streets know, which is that it is not working. It is a catastrophic failure. It needs a radical reset.
One of the most telling phrases in the Housing Commission report is that, "the ... strategy to successfully achieve a sustainable housing system is not complicated". However, successive Governments have managed to not only complicate it but fail disastrously. The essence of it is a simple fact. The house prices in Dublin and probably many other parts of the country in which the housing crisis is most acute are out of the reach of approximately 60% to 70% of people. That means that unless we have subsidised housing for 60% or 70% of people in the form of either social or affordable housing, we are going to have a housing crisis. Working people cannot afford these rents or house prices and we do not have enough social housing. We need to grasp the fact, as countries like Austria do, that 50% to 60% of all housing has to be social or affordable housing. That housing should be guaranteed by the State. At the moment, we get 10%. All of these developments that are happening around the place have 10% social housing. We will eventually get an additional 10% affordable housing on newer developments, but it is not enough. If 50% or 60% of people cannot afford the market, then 50% or 60% of everything that is built has to be social and affordable. It is simple. It is about planning the housing output based on the actual needs. We have known for some time that the Government's targets were well below what was necessary to address the housing crisis. For God's sake, can we have thresholds that recognise reality? Imagine the frustration for working people who have been on a housing list for 12, 13 or 14 years and then, just as they are about to get a house, the local authority tells them that it has reviewed their income and they are €1,000 over the threshold and all their waiting time is gone and there is no affordable housing for them. They are banjaxed. They may even be trapped in emergency accommodation and not even entitled to the housing assistance payment, HAP. It is unbelievable. The HAP thresholds are hundreds of euro per month below the rents that are actually being charged. It is a guaranteed recipe for homelessness and human misery. Then there is the tenant in situ scheme - talk about "computer says no" when it comes to people facing eviction. People ask whether there is any chance they can have their property purchased, but there is always a reason to say "No". People are told they are overhoused or underhoused and it cannot be done, rather than the priority being to stop people, particularly children, going into homelessness. I hope this commission report is a wake-up call for the radical change that is necessary, but I have my doubts.
The English premiership ended on Sunday with Manchester City in top place, Arsenal in second and Liverpool in third. Who tops the Dáil Éireann landlord table? As is well known, this Dáil is stuffed to the gills with landlords. Whereas one in 20 of the general population is a landlord, in this place the figure is one in five and the number is rising. Some 28 TDs registered as landlords in 2022. The figure for last year was 31. Fianna Fáil takes top position on that league table, with 12 landlord TDs, or exactly one third of its total number of TDs. In second place comes Fine Gael, with nine landlord TDs, which is more than one quarter of its total number of TDs. In third place come the Independent TDs, with six; a lesser number but a greater percentage than Fine Gael, making up 30% of the total number of Independent TDs.
Political parties that are stuffed to the gills with landlords cannot be trusted to resolve the rents crisis facing society, and young people in particular. It is not just that those landlords benefit from high rents, which they do. It is that they see the world through the eyes of landlords and their parties are tied in multiple ways to the interests of landlords. We need to clear those parties out of council chambers on 7 June as a step towards clearing them out of the Dáil at the earliest opportunity.
I am afraid the words of the previous speaker are a simplistic resolution to a serious and extensive housing problem that has bedevilled Members of this House for many years. Unfortunately, it was not possible to do the things that needed to be done at the time. First of all, we did not have money. It is important when one is trying to solve a housing problem to have money and to be able to borrow it at a rate that is possible to withstand and to pay back.
There were various other issues. First, we had the financial crash, then we had Covid, then we had various other things that interfered with the free flow of the provision of houses, which we all know is necessary. As the Ceann Comhairle knows, I come from County Kildare, which always had a simple attitude to housing. When there was a need for housing, the attitude was to build it, with whatever means could be found to do it. Under the Housing Act 1966, there were two ways to meet housing need. One involved the private sector. The local authority gave loans to a different category to appease that particular category. Then it provided what used to be called county council houses to another category of people. That had the effect of keeping a smooth transition between areas and categories of people to the extent that it was possible to meet the needs. Reference has been made to the 1970s and so on. The needs were met then and in the 1980s. People were always critical, however. I remember criticism coming from the other side of the house in the local authorities and in this House to the effect that the best value was not being achieved for the spending of money. In other words, the answer was not to spend it at all, which does not solve any housing problem.
I would say to the Minister that I disagree with those who say that housing policy has failed. It has not failed. It has failed to achieve the great heights that we all thought we would reach in the shortest possible time but it has not failed. As I have said privately to the Minister, now is the time to take any measures to accelerate the speed at which houses are built, because it can be done. There is a significant amount of building is taking place in the country. Under Part V, more houses are coming than ever before. That is a provision which I proposed at local authority level many years ago. Some people said we would not be able to use it because it would take up too much capital and so on. The fact is that it is working. It needs that push that will bring us to the level that we need. It will come much more quickly than we think. There are those who say there is no hope and that they will emigrate. I remember the 1980s when there were no jobs and people emigrated. People listened to soothsayers saying that the country was ruined and to leave. I remember within a couple of years, as does the Ceann Comhairle, that people had to come back from where they went because there was another financial crash in some notable economies. We had to house them here through the local authorities. It was a terrible drop-down for people who left their homes because they were wrongly advised.
I recently spoke to the Minister about this. He understands the current position, as did his predecessors. The problem was that it was not possible to get the finances and preliminary matters such as planning and so on all together to co-ordinate them in a way that would seriously impact, in a positive way, on the housing problem. We are in that position now and this opportunity should not be missed. It will come just once. If we miss it this time, we have a problem. I am convinced that the Minister is well-intentioned and well-disposed towards achieving what could not have been achieved heretofore simply by changing some of the regulations.
For example, other Members have made reference to the situation of a person who is a couple hundred euro over the income limit for a local authority house and is then taken off and scrapped from the list altogether. There is another ridiculous situation whereby a woman, for instance - it could be a man, but it is usually a woman - with three or four children is allocated a house and because she has very small kids, she feels that she cannot handle them in that type of house at that particular time. Maybe it has outside stairs, it is a duplex, or whatever the case may be. It is a serious problem and health risk. What happens to her is that if she does not take the house, she is put to the bottom of the queue again and fined. That is unnecessary. We should never treat people like that. They expect to be treated well and sympathetically by the State and they are entitled to be treated sympathetically. I ask the Minister to look at all those things that in the weeks and months ahead, to be able to ensure that whatever measures are taken will have a long-lasting impact and will bring on board the kind of people whom we were not able to facilitate over the past number of years.
It is very easy to come in here and talk about a leaked report. Many of us are talking about a leaked report and can only comment on what is in the public domain, whether on the RTÉ website or in some of the local papers. I think a few facts need to be stated at the outset. One that strikes me the most is the EU comparison. With the development and increase in our stock here, we are experiencing 4.4% growth in comparison with an EU reduction of 2.1%. That is worth bearing in mind. The Minister already referred to 500 first-time buyers drawing down mortgages every week in this country. That is a stark difference from what we were experiencing a decade ago, as Deputy Durkan has just alluded to. If I could, I would like to use my time to make some proposals in a constructive manner rather than just firing easy tropes.
I would like to mention the story of a company that has set up its base in Glanmire in my constituency, called Sea Box Europe. It specialises internationally in modular and prefabricated housing. It does a lot for the US military and for emergencies worldwide in providing accommodation for people. I visited the factory a couple of weeks ago. It is amazing to see what can be constructed in just a couple of weeks. For the life of me, four years into this Government, I do not understand why that prefabricated or modular solution has not had an impact. We have done pilot schemes. We had one in Cork South-Central, in Mahon, to deliver Ukrainian accommodation. That was a welcome scheme but it was far from quick and it was very expensive. That is well-documented in the press. Sea Box is not the only company. Companies like it are providing realistic, modular alternatives for people. Whether that is done to address homelessness, for emergency accommodation or for tackling housing relating to the migrant issue, I do not understand why the scheme has not taken off.
Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan and I both represented Cork County Council in the past and I represent Cork City Council now too. Both of those local authorities have performed admirably in recent years with their household delivery. I believe there is a specific problem in Dublin and that Dublin needs specific intervention. I have said that for a long time, not just on the rental side but also the construction side. Cork City Council, Cork County Council and Waterford City and County Council have all done reasonably well. Those local authorities can perform. I do not understand how Cork City Council and Cork County Council can outbuild Dublin City Council, which has far greater resources and income. That is a question for Dublin City Council. I often talk to officials. Something they often raise with me is the disparity between urban and rural areas with regard to affordable housing bands. It is €100,000 for rural areas and €150,000 for urban areas. They cannot fathom why it is not just treated the same, maybe aside from Dublin.
Addressing this disparity in the context of cost-rental units could result in a major increase in the numbers the State is delivering, as those cost-rental units would be State-sponsored infrastructure.
The Department of public expenditure has a role to play. I deal with many officials. The delays and the time spent going to and from the Department on various schemes is onerous. Time costs money in this game. Every month, six months or 12 months that go by add to cost to the delivery of housing. Something needs to be done about the Department's turnaround times.
Another positive initiative from the Government has been the vacant housing refurbishment grant. I can testify to that. Not a week goes by that I do not help someone with an application for the grant. The Minister and the Department are to be commended.
My final comment will be contentious across the way, but there is considerable exposure for private developers, be they large or small. Their borrowing costs are often 12%, 15% or even 20%. The State has a great capacity to borrow and to avail of cheaper credit. For the life of me, I do not understand why it is not borrowing the money on behalf of local authorities in particular, thereby reducing their exposure. A consideration of this matter would be welcomed by Cork city and county councils.
Next is Deputy Daly, who is sharing time with Deputy Ó Murchú.
Probably 60% of the representations that we receive in our office have to do with housing. This week alone, I dealt with a woman from west Kerry who could not afford housing in Dingle because much of it costs approximately €350,000, a couple from Kerry whose rent had doubled over the past four years, a woman who had been on the housing list for 16 years and was living in a small room in her mother's house, and another person who was fleeing from domestic violence and who, because the council had been unable to contact her after she moved to another place, lost the time she had accrued on the waiting list and was told she would have to wait approximately ten years for social housing.
The background to these cases is that zero affordable houses were delivered in Kerry in 2022 and 2023. If the Housing Commission's warnings about a deficit of nearly 250,000 homes are correct, then even if some had been delivered, they would have been too little, too late. The picture for social housing is not much better. According to the quarter 4 social housing pipeline report, 678 units have been delivered in Kerry over the past four years. That is way below what is required to keep up with population growth. When I was a member of Kerry County Council, I remember how one social house was delivered in Tralee one year and four were delivered the following year. That social and affordable housing targets are missed or are not high enough is a slap in the face of the renters, the evicted, the homeless and the workers of Kerry, entrenching division and creating difficulties in the retention of gardaí, teachers and nurses in the county.
Homeownership is at its lowest level in 50 years. It was reported today that the Housing Commission's report called for a radical strategic reset of housing policy and estimated an underlying housing deficit of approximately 250,000 homes. This is another indictment of the Government's housing policy and comes after Deputy Ó Broin, our housing spokesperson, revealed the extortionate amounts being paid by local authorities for social housing leases.
All of these consequences are the inevitable price to be paid for the Government policies of the past 13 years that have allowed homeownership rates to fall to record lows, facilitated investment companies and vulture funds in hoovering up rental properties, and seen prices for first-time buyers continue to increase. There needs to be increased investment in social and affordable housing, steps taken to ensure better delivery and an end to the cosy tax arrangements for investment funds. There needs to be change and an election as soon as possible.
I wish to discuss the affordable housing scheme in County Louth, specifically Cois Farraige in Blackrock just outside Dundalk. Time was extended to allow more people to apply. Initially, there were just 26 applications, only five of which met the criteria. Council officials said that the difficulty lay with the criteria. Not for the first time, I will put it on the record that I do not believe that €305,000 is what an affordable housing scheme should be priced at. It means a large number of people are priced out of the scheme. If anyone looking for a house in Cois Farraige at the moment went onto daft.ie, he or she would see prices of €360,000 and €385,000. We need to examine the criteria. My proposal would be for what we in Sinn Féin would like to see in terms of affordable housing, as the criteria are not that.
It goes without saying that we are dealing with disaster-level rents. We have seen the Daft.ie rental report. The average monthly rent in Louth is €1,661. Across the State, it is €1,836. That pushes a lot of people out of the rental market. The average month in Louth represents an increase of 6.9%. If one went onto daft.ie – I am getting great use out of it, unfortunately – one would see nine or 11 ads for available properties in Dundalk and its surrounds. I will cite a few of them: a one-bedroom apartment at €1,000 per month; a three-bedroom house for €1,500; a three-bedroom house for €1,750; and a four-bedroom house for €2,450. I could go on, but not for very long. These rents are beyond the reach of many people. We need to see the radical reset that the commission mentioned.
On behalf of the Regional Group, I am grateful for the opportunity to make some brief comments on the Housing for All strategy. As the Minister of State knows, we on this side of the House are always fair. From a political point of view, Housing for All is the only strategy that exists, so we are critiquing a strategy in isolation. I would like it if there were two or three alternatives for objective comparison. Unfortunately, this is the only published one we have. When the Housing Commission’s report is published by the end of the week, we will at least have something objective to examine thereafter.
There is some good stuff in the housing strategy, but as the Minister of State and the Minister know, it falls well short of tackling the scale and depth of this housing and homelessness crisis. It is worthwhile discussing the origins of the crisis. Some of them were international and beyond our control and some of them were very national and very within our control. The root cause of the housing crisis arose approximately 40 years ago when housing became financialised moving from being a basic human need to a financial asset or asset class. It is no accident that the countries with the largest housing and homelessness crises at the moment are in the Anglo-Saxon world. They were the ones that embraced this financialisation with the greatest gusto. That is where we are at the moment. Housing is no longer a basic human need. Instead, it is still perceived as a financial asset. I have no problem with commercial property being perceived in that way, but when residential property is, it is a completely difference scenario.
The population is increasing. There are 8 billion people on the planet. The population of Ireland has increased by 3.5% in the past 12 months, which is a major increase that has caused considerable public upheaval. Many people are restless and uneasy about it, but it is adding considerable demand to the crisis. There is also building inflation. There has been a war, a pandemic and a disruption of supply chains, but there is more to it than that. I am sure that, as a Green Party Minister of State, he is aware that the quality of housing now is high in terms of environmental standards, but that is also pushing up prices. This is rarely mentioned. It is good that the quality of the stock is improving and that the houses being built now are infinitely better than the ones the Minister of State and I grew up in.
There are international factors, but the national factors are a bit closer to home. The boom-bust cycle that we have experienced over the past 20 years has been horrendous and there is no excuse for it. We are still recovering from it. I welcome the rainy day funds that are being established. It is important that we have a countercyclical intervention, as the best time to build a house is during a recession when land and labour are cheap and materials are relatively cheap. We should be able to continue building houses through the next recession rather than lurching from one extreme to the other, which is what we have done in the past.
Another national factor has been poor housing policy. Bedsits were not perfect, but I am not sure that we should have banned them all those years ago.
I certainly spent plenty of time in a bedsit. You are better off with a roof over your head rather than sleeping on someone else's sofa. Those are the origins of why we are in this current crisis. I do not want to dwell on the problems, however, I want to focus on the solutions.
Everybody in the House agrees that the solution to this crisis is to build more houses. Obviously, there is disagreement in the context of how those houses should built but we absolutely agree that we need more houses. If you go back to economics 101, the factors of production are very simple. You just need four things, namely land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship. If we want to mobilise the country to build houses, those are the four factors we should be focusing on.
As stated, the first is land. We have loads of it. Ireland is one of the least populous countries per square kilometre in the European Union. There should be no problem with land, but there is because the planning process is paralysed. With the planning Bill that is due to come before the House us before the recess, we hope we will be able to address that.
I also want to focus on the potential for a state construction company. I agree that the Land Development Agency is a type of State construction company, but the Minister of State, Deputy Joe O'Brien, will be aware from experience that the OPW is there and it is assembling small villages of modular homes. We need to take full advantage of the Land Development Agency and the OPW from that point of view.
From a labour perspective, I very much welcome the return to an emphasis on apprenticeships. In fairness, it is important to state that the Taoiseach brought that focus back when he was Minister. Around 20 years ago, apprenticeships were looked down on. People wanted everyone to go to third level education. They wanted you to use your head rather than your hands. At least the emphasis on apprenticeships is coming back.
Also around 20 years ago, we built the State's motorways in conjunction with international companies. We have the best motorways in Europe for good reason. We did not have the expertise or the muscle, so we got companies from Turkey and France to build our motorways. Why can we not do the same thing in the context of housing? If the State wants to build large property developments, can we put the contracts out to tender and get international companies involved? If there is a finite amount of labour available in Ireland, why not look abroad and see whether we can access the labour in that way?
From a capital point of view, there should be no difficulty. Home Building Finance Ireland is pumping out loans, banks are giving credit to developers and approved housing bodies are getting the money they need. There is no difficulty from a capital perspective, but perhaps what we need to look at is entrepreneurship. This is the fourth factor. I welcome the waiving of development levies over the past couple of months. They made a sizeable impact from a construction point of view. It is good that the levies relating to the local authorities and Uisce Éireann have been waived.
The Croí Conaithe scheme is very important. The Minister was saying that there are 8,000 successful applications in the system already. This shows that it can be done.
We can do more when it comes to one-off housing. Many people out there need to be empowered. They have the site, the money, the means and the contractors lined up but they do not have the permission to build.
I believe the Minister of State will agree that there is room for improvement in the context of using modern methods of construction. Ireland is one of the few EU countries that only allows modular houses to be constructed to a two-storey level. If you drive across the Continent, you will see modular hospitals, modular schools and modular office blocks. There is no mica or pyrite in them. There are 70-year guarantees. We can certainly embrace modern methods of construction to at least help address the crisis that we have.
I very much look forward to the Housing Commission's report being published at the end of the week. I would hope that it is a blueprint for progress. I would hope that it has an alternative strategy put forward and that it is not merely a critique of the existing strategy. By all accounts, it appears to be quite comprehensive. I look forward to that.
I welcome the fact that the Minister came to Portarlington recently to open a housing estate. His visit and the opening of the estate were very well received by the people who have been accommodated there recently.
I welcome the good stuff from Housing for All, but I am sure the Minister would agree it does not go anywhere near to address the scale of the crisis we are currently facing.
As I stand here this evening, there are families, individuals and couples, all prospective first-time buyers, in the Clonakilty area of west Cork who are gutted. I am gutted too. I will explain why. For the first time, west Cork was going to see the delivery of an affordable housing scheme - something that I and the people of the area had been seeking for years. There was finally going to be an affordable housing scheme. We had delivered social houses and plenty of houses had gone on sale on the private market, but this was 22 houses in Clonakilty to cater for those who could not get finance and who were not on the social housing list. They are gutted because that affordable housing scheme has collapsed. It is gone. It is no longer available. That is an absolute disgrace. Houses that would have been on the market for €340,000 or €345,000 were going to be sold for in and around €260,000. In using the word "affordable" to describe houses in that range, I understand why the criticisms come. It is significantly less than €345,000, however. People were excited and were looking forward to the possibilities. I am aware it was on a first-come-first-served basis and not everyone was guaranteed, but at least the option was there. It is no longer there.
This is not the fault of Cork County Council. It is not the fault of the auctioneer. It is not the fault of the builder. In my opinion, the blame lies squarely at the feet of the developer. There is one word, in my opinion, that can be used to describe what has gone on here and that is "greed". I want to explain why this affordable housing scheme has collapsed. At this point, it will not be saved. It has collapsed because an agreement in principle, maybe not a contract - it was not tied down - was reached with Cork County Council for 22 affordable homes. Eighteen of those would have been three-bed houses and four would have been two-bed houses - the local authority knowing that the biggest demand in terms of affordable housing would have been for three bedrooms. Just as Cork County Council was ready to press go and just as it was ready to advertise - it had everything ready to advertise this scheme earlier this year - the goalposts were moved. As far as I can gather, the developer came back with a new proposal that it would not give the local authority those first 22 houses, including the 18 to which I refer, and instead would give the local authority ten three-bed and 12 two-bed houses, which was a completely different prospect. There was also a discussion on a new price.
I do not blame Cork County Council one iota for withdrawing from this project. I do not blame the local authority if it never deals with this developer again, and that is the point I want to make here today. When developers behave in this way-----
Be careful in relation to people's identities.
I have not identified any developer, but this is a situation that I do not want to see happen again.
I have no problem with the situation; I just do not want anyone identified.
I do not want to see this happen again in circumstances where the State or local authorities deal with people who act in such a way. I want to get that across. I feel for the families. They will have to wait a couple of years before the next affordable housing scheme comes along again. Thankfully, we will see one in Bandon very shortly. We will see one in Kinsale. There will be another in Clonakilty, but this was the first opportunity. It is a crying shame.
One of the biggest barriers to the delivery of housing is infrastructure. I want to take this opportunity to raise the issue of wastewater treatment in the village of Shannonvale near my home town of Clonakilty. We can see no new developments there because of the lack of wastewater treatment. I want to reiterate the situation there. We have a children's play area right in the middle of the village where you have excrement and sewage coming up through the surface. The local authority is aware of it, Uisce Éireann is aware of it but yet it is on no capital plan. What we keep hearing back from Uisce Éireann is that this will cost approximately €900,000. The wastewater treatment plant only caters for approximately nine houses and, therefore, €100,000 per house does not merit putting it on the capital programme, but it is much more than wastewater treatment. We are talking about a children's play area in the centre of a village. It is an amenity. It is at the centre of the village. It is not just a wastewater treatment solution. I want to emphasise that point.
I repeatedly raise the issue of housing solutions for our islands. We have a problem, especially in the west Cork islands, where we are seeing depopulation. We are struggling to fill schools. We are struggling to fill job opportunities. The problem is that the islands are subject to the same planning regulations as the rest of the country. That needs to change. What I want to see is the Minister for housing invoke powers that would allow amendments to county development plans in respect of island areas in order to allow for housing development there.
I welcome the opportunity to examine the Government’s Housing for All policy. While others talk, Fianna Fáil in Government is a party of action on housing. Since his appointment, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, has delivered a sea change in the construction sector in Ireland. The legislative framework has been adapted and updated, and billions of euro have been allocated to deliver social, affordable and cost-rental homes. Every honest person accepts that seeing the full impact of this takes time, but the facts show a major expansion in house building has been delivered and is accelerating. Since Fianna Fáil came to office in July 2020, more than 110,000 new homes have been completed. In the past 12 months, construction of 53,011 homes has commenced. In the past four years, more houses have been built than in the previous nine years combined. There is more to be done, but that is real momentum.
Meanwhile, opposition voices in the Dáil have opposed almost every single initiative to support homeownership and increase housing supply. They have opposed almost every single legislative change to streamline the system and deliver more social, affordable and cost-rental homes. In their constituencies, they have opposed and continue to oppose the construction of thousands of homes. They then appear in the Chamber and complain about the lack of housing supply. They love to debate and they love the sound bites, but they refuse to put forward costed, detailed policies. They are all talk and no action. The truth is that the Minister and the Government have completely changed the structural environment underpinning the construction sector in Ireland. The changes recognise that the construction market failed, as it has across the UK and other western countries, and that State intervention is required to ensure sufficient delivery.
Housing for All is the single largest investment in housing in the history of this State. It is a fully funded, radical and most realistic plan for the future. In my constituency of Dún Laoghaire, we have seen social housing lists reduce as the massive increase in social housing stock becomes more available. Last year, we saw 597 homes begin construction at Shanganagh Castle, Shankill. That is 597 homes for 597 families. That is real progress, which demonstrates Housing for All is working.
I welcome news that the Housing Commission has concluded its work. I commend the Minister on requesting that work. It was clear to everyone across the House that targets would have to be revised upwards following the most recent census. Rather than setting targets on the fly, as many in the Opposition seem to favour, the Government rightly sought specialist independent advice to set sustainable targets. Given the massive level of funding involved, this is right and proper. It is clear more needs to be done to deliver affordable housing, and this must be prioritised in those new targets. We should also introduce rightsizing supports, and more flexibility in this area, including in the area of supplying housing for people with disabilities, as mentioned.
Some suggestions from the Opposition today have been constructive and are welcome. However, Sinn Féin’s plans to scrap the help-to-buy scheme, the first home scheme and the €70,000 vacant property grant would destroy the route to homeownership for a generation of young people. Rather than being scrapped, as Sinn Féin is planning, these schemes should be expanded. There is a stark and clear choice in this upcoming election. It is a clear choice between real progress and solutions or scrapping supports for homeownership and risking the continued development and delivery of housing supply.
I know where Fianna Fáil stands: more homes equals more homeowners. That is our policy. That is our message. It is clear, simple and true.
I, too, am happy to contribute to the debate. I thank the officials in Tipperary County Council, formerly South Tipperary County Council, and a wonderful, outstanding council official, Mr. Sean Lonergan, who is retiring after decades of service to the council and the people of County Tipperary. He is an outstanding public servant with great ideas, vision and passion. Unfortunately, he did not always get the support he needed.
We are listening to all these figures. It is a game of Punch and Judy over and back between Sinn Féin and Fianna Fáil. I am sick, sore and tired of listening to all this about houses being built. We built houses from the forties to the nineties and afterwards, and we had none of this show and spin. There is a great old recitation my daughter used to recite at Scór, called "Maybe that is the way I am" or similar, and the Shelbourne Hotel was mentioned, but this is pure comedy. The facts are that 90% of the apartments built last year in Dublin city were sold off to vulture funds and big organisations. That is the problem.
After the collapse, the Government and former Deputy Michael Noonan said we needed vulture funds. I know that these funds were a necessary part of our recovery. However, the Government, including Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and now the Green Party, are in hock to all these big businesses, big real estate investment trusts, REITs, and big companies that are buying up all the units, and not the ordinary people. They have forgotten about daoine na hÉireann, na daoine beaga and na daoine aosta. They have forgotten about them completely. The Government is now subservient to CRH. It put on a levy to deal with mica and pyrite because it was CRH that supplied the faulty concrete, but that company cannot be penalised because the Government is totally in hock to it. It cannot penalise CRH but it penalises ordinary people by driving up the cost of building. There is all the Government's folderol with the so-called BER rating and the whole lot, including insulation, and the cost of oil. The price of oil was increased and then the Government put on a carbon tax.
It is backwards the Government is going instead of forwards. While it is in hock to big development and big business, we will not get houses for the Irish people. I know dozens of couples, as do my colleagues, as they said, in rural Ireland who have the wherewithal, the site, and the vision to house themselves, without asking the State for anything, but cannot get planning permission. Planning bungles on. We then have the whole mess of An Bord Pleanála. The Government has lost its way. Great visionaries, such as T.K. Whitaker, were here, but it has lost its way completely. It is time we had a whole new thinking. There is now spinning with this new report today, and bits of it have been selected going back and forward, but the Government has lost its way completely. It is in the pockets of big business.
The Housing for All initiative is evidently not meeting its goals. Homelessness has reached unprecedented levels. I am very worried because the presence of even a single homeless individual is a national embarrassment, yet the Government seems complacent about the nearly 14,000 people, including 4,000 children, who are currently without homes. Since the launch of Housing for All, homelessness has surged by 60%. In case the Sinn Féin hurlers on the ditch who previously accused me of not declaring an interest in housing do so again, it is a common and well-known fact that I am involved in the provision of homes of different types for all the different sectors of society. I want to put that on the record.
When it comes to dealing with housing, there are simple things that I would not fight with the Minister of State about. The building of single rural cottages, which is what we always called them, on family farms was always a great way of taking care of not just of one generation but the next generation of that family's housing need. We are not doing that any more. We are not building single rural cottages in the numbers we used to, when there was no money in the country in the seventies, eighties and early nineties. Our local authorities were very well equipped to do that. While I mention local authorities, I thank very sincerely the housing staff of Kerry County Council, from the director down to the other officials, the people on the ground, including individual housing officers, investigating officers and those dealing with homeless people in County Kerry, who all do an excellent job. I will continuously tell the Minister of State to give them more resources.
The Minister of State refers to vacant local authority houses as voids. I call them empty houses. Over the past number of months of canvassing with the different candidates I am supporting in County Kerry, I see the massive number of houses that are empty. It is disgraceful. They should be brought back into use immediately.
Housing for All is a miss because the Government is not providing houses for all. If it were, it would allow the people who want to provide their own houses to build them, and it could then provide more houses for the people who need them. What it is actually doing is pricing people who want to build their own houses out of the market. It is then allowing vulture funds to buy up housing in mass amounts and charge extortionate prices to people if they want to be housed.
The Government is also not looking after the elderly. If people want to see their families grow, whether they are in a city, village or town, or even rural areas, planning laws should allow people to be located in places where they grew up and made their lives. They should be allowed to downsize, allowing younger couples to take on the family house or build a small house on the site.
If it is environmentally correct, they should be allowed to build it. However, the law states that, if you want to build a granny flat, it must be built onto the house. What is wrong with being 5 m or 6 m away and having a small bit of separation? What is wrong with building single-storey houses in the cities for the elderly population or high-rise units of three or four storeys to accommodate people who want to downsize and live in a safe environment within the cities? The Government is not building such properties. Many people who have houses, even in the cities, have a small bit of greenery. They want that small bit of greenery and to be out in the garden and so on but the Government has not allowed for that either. Infrastructure and common sense are key when you want housing for all. I ask the Government to consider a common-sense approach, to allow people to build and downsize and to stop overcomplicating matters.
It has been two and a half years since Housing for All was published and what has the Minister to show for it? The answer is record-breaking homelessness, crumbling houses, defective dwellings and tents of asylum seekers. One thing is certain; the Minister, Deputy O’Brien, has not provided housing for all. Far from it.
The housing situation in this country has never been so dire. Secure and stable housing has become completely inaccessible to many. This speaks to a complete failure of Government policy. On the other hand, perhaps it is a success because the only conclusion that can be drawn is that this is how the Government wants things to be and that it is Government policy. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have created a crisis of unprecedented proportions, which is being felt by everyone. Even the Housing Commission has called for a "radical strategic reset” of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil housing policy and condemns the “ineffective decision making and reactive policy making where risk aversion dominates".
Along with the cost of living, the housing shortage has made owning a home a pipe dream for most people in my constituency and across the country. Renting is not an option for many either. It was revealed this week that Donegal and Sligo have seen some of the highest increases in rent prices in the first three months of 2024. The latest Daft.ie report shows that rents in Donegal were 13.3% higher than a year previously, with the average rent price in the county now standing at €1,126. People are already struggling with the current high rents. Further increases will make housing costs an insurmountable struggle for many and will push people into poverty. How close to the brink is the Government willing to push its citizens?
The Housing Commission has reported that Ireland has, by comparison with other European countries, one of the highest levels of public expenditure on housing and yet one of the poorest outcomes. Perhaps the provision of housing to big companies is the outcome the Minister wants. This is a disgrace and demonstrates just how incompetent are the Minister for housing and his Government. I urge all of those voting in the upcoming local and European elections to consider this Government’s housing record. We are being told that more houses are being built than ever before and that the Government is serious about tackling the housing crisis but the facts and the numbers speak for themselves. Record homelessness speaks for itself. It is time for a government that speaks for the people.
I welcome the opportunity to speak on these statements on Housing for All. I would have thought the topic might have changed given the commission report. I look at the Minister's opening statement again, as I do with all speeches. I listen to them and I read them. I am told by the Minister that Housing for All is working. I cannot imagine how the narrative in this speech could continue after we have seen the leaked part of the commission's statement. We are told Housing for All is working. I can tell the Minister of State that it is certainly not working in Galway city. I speak today in the context of the second highest number of people ever being homeless in Ireland at 13,866, 4,147 of whom are children. That is the second highest number we have seen and we are being told the policy is working. In Galway, 288 adults are recorded as homeless.
The Simon Communities do a regular spot-check on what is available. In Galway city, there is absolutely nothing available within the HAP scheme limits, discretionary or otherwise. In our office, as in the offices of other TDs, we are busy putting on pressure to get people housed who have spent 20 years on a waiting list. They are lucky because they are actually on a housing waiting list. A myriad of schemes have been introduced by different governments and they do not know where they are. If you were put on the RAS after 2011, you no longer have a right to a social home. You are considered adequately housed and must go out onto the private market, where there are no houses. If you were on the RAS prior to 2011, you are on the list but those put on the scheme post 2011 are not. If you were availing of HAP, you were not on any list but then some parallel list was invented.
There are a whole myriad of nonsensical schemes and I include the help-to-buy scheme in that. I am at one with Sinn Féin if it is serious about scrapping that scheme. If our housing policy means we have to back consultants to buy a house in Ireland, although fair play to them for availing of the scheme, there is something seriously amiss.
We now have the leaked report from the commission, which calls for a radical strategic reset of housing policy and highlights ineffective decision-making and reactive policy-making where risk aversion dominates. It calls for emergency action to address the housing deficit and points out that pent-up demand, outside of population increase and people coming into our country, was never factored in. It also tells us the very lowest number of houses that are necessary. It tells us that, by comparison with our European partners, Ireland has one of the highest levels of public expenditure and yet one of the poorest outcomes. At a basic level, it calls for a targeted increase in the proportion of social and cost-rental housing to 20% of the national stock. It goes on.
There is something that we on this side of the House have repeatedly highlighted. I have highlighted it based on my 17 years at local authority level. The housing crisis was created by policies from various governments that were, as Deputy Berry has said, intent on making a product out of housing rather than a basic human right. In Galway, we stopped building in 2009 and did not build another house until 2020 or 2021. Even now, we are not building any affordable houses in Galway city or county. To add insult to injury, we set up a task force more than five years ago and, although we have changed the chairperson, who was another former Secretary General of the Department of housing, we have not had one report analysing what is happening in Galway city. It is just another layer of bureaucracy while the chair, who is now gone, repeatedly expresses disappointment at the failure of the local authorities to deliver. Do I blame the local authorities? No, I do not. The only thing I blame them for is not being honest with Government when we stopped building in 2009. They should have had the courage to tell the Government that this was the making of a housing disaster and that they needed to build houses. Since then, they have been run down even more.
Perhaps the Minister of State can tell us the current number of vacancies in the planning departments and housing departments? Yesterday, I received a scandalous letter from an official in the housing department. She could not give me basic replies as to where someone was on the housing waiting list. Does the Minister of State know why? This person told me it was because her department was understaffed, that it had more important duties than carrying out an assessment and that it could not give us basic answers. I apologise; I am over time.
In this House, we quite often talk about numbers and statistics but each one of these represents a household, a family, a pensioner or someone else in need. When these people receive that relevant notice to quit, their world is turned upside down and inside out. The impact on children is astronomical. Mentally, it is a pressure like no other. In Clare, the local authority is working with more than 60 recipients of notices to quit. For further context, there are 2,866 on the social housing waiting list in Clare, 76% of whom are in need of a one-bedroom or two-bedroom property. Although the Minister finally increased twice the income thresholds for County Clare, there were years of delay. From January to April of this year, 35 applications did not qualify and 37 were deemed invalid. I wanted to mention them because I am cognisant of those who are in need but not even able to get on the social housing waiting list. They are still locked out of social housing supports and have nowhere to turn.
Housing for All fails on four points. First, its name, Housing for All, is a smack in the face for those who are in emergency accommodation, those staying with family, those who have received a notice to quit and those just trying to get on the property ladder.
It is also because the Minister has not currently developed a mechanism to record those who are homeless as he only records those who are accessing emergency accommodation.
A further point would be that there have been insufficient targets and we have known that for quite some time. The Housing Commission's report should not be a major shock to many in that regard. Also, the plan does not address or acknowledge the pent-up demand.
I do not have much remaining speaking time but I want to talk about the local authority new builds. When Clare County Council responds, it says that it has reached its delivery target under Housing for All. It has reached a target set by Government and so the job is done. In 2020, however, we saw only 34 such builds, in 2021 we saw only 55, in 2022 we saw 184 but last year we only saw 31. This year, the target is proposed to be 153 but we have already seen a social housing development in Ennistymon being paused because of a lack of the relevant water infrastructure required for the development.
I thank all Members of the House for their input to this afternoon's statements. I welcome the opportunity to add to the Minister, Deputy O'Brien's, opening statement and to highlight some of the key achievements. There is no silver bullet when addressing something as complex as the housing crisis. Through the Housing for All plan, we are confronting these challenges head on and we have made considerable progress since the publication of the plan back in September 2021.
In 2022, the first full year of delivery under the Housing for All plan, we delivered close to 30,000 new homes, 5,000 more than the target. In 2023, we delivered close to 33,000 new builds, 3,700 homes over target. This delivery represents the most new homes delivered in more than 15 years, and a further 5,841 new homes were delivered in the first quarter of 2024.
The year 2023 also saw the highest annual output of social homes in decades. Nearly 12,000 social homes were delivered, which represents a significant increase of over 16% on the 2022 delivery of 10,263. It is the highest delivery of new build social homes in half a century, which represents significant progress.
During the lifetime of this Government, we have provided 5,800 affordable housing options. In excess of 4,000 affordable solutions were delivered in 2023, which is more than double the number of the previous year. It is important to note that the 2022 delivery from a standing point provides the first affordable homes in a generation. More than 1,600 cost-rental homes have already been delivered under the Housing for All plan and there are a further 1,400 cost-rental homes in the pipeline, including more than 300 cost-rental homes at Oscar Traynor Road in Dublin and 264 affordable and social homes at Saint Kevin's Hospital in Cork.
Furthermore, in April 2023, my Department introduced the secure tenancy affordable rental scheme which will see the delivery of more than 4,000 cost-rental homes by 2027. A total of 642 homes under this scheme have already been approved, and we need to recognise that this tenure did not exist in Ireland before Housing for All made delivery of cost-rental homes in this country a reality.
To help close the viability gap and to reduce construction costs, we have introduced a range of supports and schemes. These include the recent extension of the development levy and the water connection fee waiver. The effectiveness of this waiver is very evident with in excess of 18,000 new homes commenced in April alone. This builds on almost 12,000 homes commenced in quarter 1 of 2024.
Recent data also shows that planning permissions were granted for more than 11,000 new homes in quarter 4 of 2023, which is a 47% increase on quarter 4 of 2022 and is 16% higher than quarter 3 of 2023. These indicators show that the increase in new home delivery seen under this Government can be sustained.
I reiterate the importance of the Planning and Development Bill. This Bill, when passed, will align the national, regional and local tiers of planning, encouraging public debate and participation at the plan-making stage. The introduction of statutory timelines for decision-making, including for the newly renamed an coimisiún pleanála, will bring certainty for the public and stakeholders involved in the delivery of housing.
The suite of initiatives under Housing for All are helping more first-time buyers achieve their dream of owning a home, which is evident by the record 30,450 first-time buyers who have had mortgages approved last year. The first home scheme and help to buy scheme, in particular, have proven to be key in bridging the affordability gap for first-time buyers, and they continue to support first-time buyers and other eligible buyers in purchasing new homes. The delivery figures for the first quarter of 2024 show that more than 4,000 approvals have been issued since the first home scheme was launched in 2022 with 75% of all approvals issued in Dublin, Cork, Kildare, Meath and Wicklow. The Government has recently approved an additional €40 million State commitment to this scheme.
Vacancy and dereliction are also being tackled in a way that will not only help people to make homes more affordable but will also bring new life and vibrancy back into towns and villages throughout the country. Under the vacancy property refurbishment grant, in excess of 7,900 applications have been made, with more than 4,800 already approved and we expect to meet our target by 2025.
To further accelerate and increase the supply of homes and to deliver on our ambition, the Government is supporting increased capacity, innovation, and productivity in the construction sector. We know that to meet the rising level of demand, the construction sector itself needs to expand its capacity. We are taking actions to increase skills supply through the current network of skills provision across the third-level system to tackle both climate and housing issues. Under Housing for All, we have introduced the build to innovate initiative which is aimed at increasing productivity and innovation. It is supporting Irish companies to achieve within the residential construction sector and to enhance the operational performance of their business, including through increased usage of modern methods of construction. Thirty companies have already supported the grant aid packages, with in excess of 20,000 homes being delivered over the next three years. Under the plan, the annual intake in construction and construction-related apprenticeships has steadily increased. In 2023, the apprentice population surpassed 20,000 individuals. That is a 53% increase on the pre-Covid-19 figure in 2019. Currently, 30 of the 73 national apprenticeships are construction or construction-related.
Housing for All has championed the widespread adoption of modern methods of construction, including the publication of the roadmap for increased adaptation of MMC in public housing delivery. We all know MMC has the potential to be transformative in improving the speed of housing delivery, in sustainability and, ultimately, in lowering cost. We are leading by example in harnessing these advanced construction methods in the delivery of housing. We are progressing the use of MMC through a number of accelerated developments with the potential to develop more than 1,500 social homes across 33 sites in 13 local authorities. We are determined to foster innovation wherever possible and to equip the industry with the expertise required for transformative change.
While significant progress has been made in the delivery of housing, we are also aware of the challenges that remain. There is no shortage of will or determination to deal with the issue and we are resolute in our ambition to eradicate homelessness in Ireland. Resources and funding are not an obstacle to the urgent efforts required. Budget 2024 provides an additional €242 million for homelessness services, and this funding will support individuals experiencing homelessness with emergency accommodation and the supports they need to exit homelessness to a secure home.
We are working with all local authorities to reduce the numbers in emergency accommodation, ensuring all local authorities allocate increased numbers of social homes to households in emergency accommodation. As the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, mentioned earlier, he received the Housing Commission's report just under two weeks ago. It was discussed at Cabinet this morning and he will publish it very shortly. This report will inform the ongoing review of the Housing for All plan. I know this report is of great interest to Members, in particular the commission's conclusions on housing demands and targets. The review of the housing targets, which were planned to consider the findings of census 2022, is well advanced. The evidence base underpinning this work must be robust and transparent and will be informed by independent peer-reviewed research which has been carried out by the ESRI.
It is clear the new targets will likely be considerably higher than the current targets. It is also clear that to achieve these targets, we must continue to build on the momentum created by the Housing for All plan as it continues to go from strength to strength.
I conclude by reiterating that increased supply is a key solution to ending the housing crisis once and for all. Planning permissions, commencements and completions continue to rise. Supply is increasing and our pipeline is growing. The plan is working and through its continued implementation we will fix the housing problem and ensure there is housing for all.