Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 19 Mar 2025

Vol. 1064 No. 4

Report of the Housing Commission: Statements (Resumed)

Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan

This is a topic that many of us have tried to get speaking time on over the past few weeks so I appreciate the attendance of the Minister of State, Deputy Kieran O'Donnell. My first point concerns Irish Water. It is probably a major bone of contention for the vast majority of Members across the Oireachtas. I always think it is good to localise and individualise things to give a picture of how things are progressing across the country. Cork County Council and Irish Water came together three years ago to devise the capital plan for the town and villages scheme. Thirty-seven towns and villages across Cork county were placed in chronological order in terms of importance and how quickly they could deliver them. They devised a scheme of one to 37. Funding was announced for the first of those six projects two years ago. Many of them were in west Cork, which is not in my constituency of Cork North-Central. I use them to illustrate how quickly or slowly things move. Of the six projects that were identified, not one has commenced despite funding being allocated. I have been around long enough to understand that it might have to go through environmental impact assessments, tendering, planning and all those processes but it is the pace of delivery that really concerns me. Whatever about Irish Water's inability or lack of capacity to deliver those 37 schemes in Cork county, at the pace at which it is delivering them, I would guess that No. 20 or 25 on that list is not likely to see a wastewater treatment plant for the best part of a decade. I use my time here this evening to plead with the powers that be. I have spoken to Cork County Council about this. There is a way where the local authority in this case or a developer could work in conjunction with Irish Water to fast-track some of the infrastructure that is identified as being necessary.

I point to the case of Carrignavar, which is a village I have mentioned here on numerous occasions over the past five years. Carrignavar is a unique village. It is ten minutes to the city centre and is about to get a new approved bus service under BusConnects. It will be linked to the city very efficiently. Carrignavar has not seen a new housing development in over ten years because its wastewater treatment plant is at capacity. It is a perfect example. It got a new school. When it got the new school, it was a condition that it could not go over a certain number of students. That is how hamstrung the village is in terms of its wastewater capacity. The old school site is now available and, hopefully, will be developed in the coming years but it is all contingent on the delivery of this wastewater treatment plant. When we speak to Irish Water locally, it tells us that the best case scenario is seven years.

That is one example. I could go through Whitechurch, Knockraha or a litany of villages in the northern hinterland of Cork city that are in similar circumstances. I know from talking to other Deputies - we spoke about it over lunch today - that the same is true for so many counties across the country. I do believe that working in conjunction or under the supervision of Irish Water, local authorities or developers in certain cases should be able to develop some of this infrastructure for Irish Water to take charge of afterwards. It would be a missed opportunity if we did not at least explore that.

The second issue I wish to raise is social housing. Since July 2020, 42,000 social homes have been added to the social housing stock nationally while 2023 saw 12,000 new builds, acquisitions and leased properties, which is the highest year we have had, so nobody is disputing the good work that has been undertaken over the past number of years but, again, it comes back to the pace and scale of it. The one thing I would always have raised while I was a member of the council and since I was elected here was the disparity between the social and affordable housing ratio in terms of delivery. I grew up in a council house. My parents purchased their home in the 1970s so there is no snobbery in what I am about to say about delivery for the cohort of people who are trying to get on the property ladder and purchase an affordable home.

Cork City Council and Cork County Council are two of the better performers nationally in the delivery of social and affordable homes. The number of couples, young couples in particular, I meet and who cannot get access to the affordable property is concerning. It comes back to the ratios and targets set in the Department. We should be putting greater emphasis on local authorities to deliver affordable homes in greater numbers. The Minister of State is probably aware that many local authorities view targets as targets and once they have met them many of them believe that the job is done. It needs to be emphasised over and over again that targets are a minimum not a maximum. Local authorities need to do more on affordable housing.

One criticism I would make of this Government and the previous Government would be in the area of child homelessness. It is a stain that we are going to live with as a government; there is no excusing it. I know we have signed up to the Lisbon accords for 2030, where we hope to eradicate homelessness by 2030. However, try living in the shoes of a family with children in the next five years while we aspire to attain that goal. For me five years is a long time. The ill effects that children in those circumstances experience might be seen for years to come. We need greater urgency. The target is 2030 but we need to try to bridge that gap far sooner.

I wish to speak about cost rental and AHBs. Cork has performed fairly well compared with other local authorities. I support the cost-rental model which is a very welcome initiative and we should probably do much more of it. We have a target of 18,000 cost-rental homes by 2030. Over the past six to 12 months, I have been dealing with house builders particularly in the north side of Cork city working on various projects in conjunction with Cork City Council. Months have been wasted on red tape, waiting for CREL letters or CAF letters from departmental officials, pieces of paper sitting on desks for what seems like an endless time, delaying the process. I welcome that we are looking to end the four-stage process and making it a single-stage process for local authority-led housing into the future. This waiting for literally paper is pointless. Many of these house builders and developers are borrowing at great expense. Every month they are waiting on a letter to come from the Department means they need to increase their borrowing in some cases which ultimately just increases the cost of delivery of a housing scheme. We need to do something to streamline that.

I do not know how many times I have spoken in here about positive ageing and right-sizing of properties. We delegate that and say that local authorities should be looking after that. Again we need to be looking at targets and setting down markers for the local authorities. I refer to one specific scheme in Glounthaune in my parish where members of the community took it upon themselves to develop a right-sizing initiative in the village. They purchased land on their own backs, but then were told at the end of it that they could not actually get funding to develop the scheme. They were advised by the Department at the time that they had to become an AHB. I will not say they do not have the capacity; this group probably does have the capacity to do that. That scheme had local authority support at least on the face of it but fell down because of a lack of funding or inability to get funding. It is not good enough to delegate the responsibility to the local authority and let it drift.

In the very same parish there are large one-off houses, large family homes with four, five or six bedrooms. The Minister of State is probably familiar with the area; it is a fairly affluent area. These people have massive houses and their families have flown the nest. They are looking to right size but without the direction of the Department, this initiative, with the way it is running at the moment almost on a discretionary basis from local authority to local authority, will not be efficient.

I know the draft of the NPF is already out. I reiterate something that we have said at our parliamentary party meetings in recent weeks. The NPF will encourage us to zone more land. That is a given and is what many of us have been crying out for for years. However, if local authorities have to go through the same old rigmarole in their development plans and go out to public consultation for two years, that does not display the urgency this needs. Something seismic needs to come from the Department centrally in relation to the NPF when it is published. There needs to be some fast-tracking or shortening of the existing process. We have all sat through development plans at local authority level. If we are hamstrung by waiting two years for a development plan to be updated or reviewed on foot of whatever the NPF publishes we will really hamstring ourselves.

Deputy Ryan O'Meara

I thank the Minister of State for being here today. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on such an important issue. The housing crisis is the single greatest issue facing my generation, including young people like me trying to get a start in life, those of us who are still locked out of the property market and living at home, young people moving abroad because they see a better quality of life, a better chance abroad, working families caught in a rental trap or not being able to afford a mortgage, social housing waiting lists and older people or pensioners who are caught renting and worried about their tenure for years to come relying on a pension. I acknowledge the good work that has been done to date in increasing capacity in the system and increasing the number of builds but there are still challenges and we have a long way to go.

I want to speak on a local issue, but more so to highlight the issue in general. Cloughjordan in County Tipperary, where I live, has no capacity in the wastewater treatment plant and as a result we cannot build any homes. I was elected to Tipperary County Council last June as a Fianna Fáil councillor of course. For the previous ten years we had not had a county councillor in our area. The last Fianna Fáil county councillor in the area, Jim Casey, also lives in Cloughjordan. During his final years on the council he was told that this plant was a priority for upgrade; it was in the top two or three to be upgraded. There was a ten-year gap with no county councillor in the area.

Representatives of Irish Water appeared before the council and I asked them for an update on the wastewater treatment plant in Cloughjordan. Irish Water was still at the feasibility stage. They did not know whether to upgrade the plant or build an entirely new one. They told me it would be five to seven years at best to build that medium-sized plant. We are talking about a small town or a large village. Doing the sums, if they were to start right now, which they do not even have an appetite to do, it would take five to seven years. If a 29-year-old living in Cloughjordan wanted get planning permission to build a house, that 29-year-old would probably be 40 years of age before they could build a house in Cloughjordan. All those in my generation are facing the exact same issue. We have two primary schools in Cloughjordan, a Roman Catholic school and a Church of Ireland school. How do we populate those schools? How does our Kilruane MacDonaghs GAA club continue to have hurling and camogie teams for generations coming up along? How do we continue to revitalise a village like that when we cannot build houses?

There is a private estate in the village. The majority of houses are still connected to a developer-led wastewater plant. Some 17 years after that plant was built, none of those houses can be connected into the mains because we have no capacity in the system. The eco village in Cloughjordan is known nationally and internationally. There are dozens of serviced sites there but none of them can be built on because we do not have capacity in the system. No new houses can be built because there is no capacity in the system. There are over 30 people in the small village of Cloughjordan on the housing waiting list. The local authority cannot build any houses because there is no capacity in the system. If commercial units go into old buildings in the village, they have never had a connection onto the system previously. It is a Cromwellian plantation and some of the buildings in the town are very old. Those commercial units cannot get up and running because there is no capacity in the system.

Do we tell all of the young people or anyone who wants a house in Cloughjordan to move and build a house in Nenagh, the nearest town to me? We thought there was capacity for about 300 houses in Nenagh but when the census was done, we realised that the population growth in Nenagh had been far greater than expected. Rather than having capacity for around 300 houses in Nenagh, it now looks like we might not have any capacity at all. That is without a single house being built. A planning application has been submitted for the wastewater plant in Nenagh but it looks like that will not be delivered until about 2029.

Where do we go for my generation to build a house in that area or to get a house in that area? The overall reason I am talking about all of this here today is the time it takes and the lack of urgency by Irish Water and its lack of desire to deliver on these projects. That is the number one barrier to the building of houses in my area. It is the reason I cannot build a house in my own village and why none of my peers can. Affordability is expensive and we need supply to increase to bring back affordability but we cannot even get to that stage until that infrastructure is delivered. These are just two examples in Nenagh and Cloughjordan. I could also mention Ballycommon as another example in north Tipperary. Across the board in rural Ireland this is the reason we cannot build houses in those areas. Irish Water and State agencies just like that need to feel the sense of urgency that we in this Chamber feel. The people who come to me on a daily basis wanting to buy a house or build a house or get a home of their own also need to feel the same level of urgency. I want Irish Water and those State agencies to feel that exact same level of urgency.

I welcome that we secured in the programme for Government the above-the-shop property grant from the Fianna Fáil manifesto. We said we would introduce a grant of €100,000 to bring vacant properties above shop units back into use. We need to act on this urgently. There is massive scope for the rapid delivery of vacant properties above commercial units in our towns and villages. This grant should not be limited to two per individual. In a number of cases we would see, for example, an old pub in rural Ireland that is never realistically going to be a pub again, and its licence might even be gone. The unit, however, would probably be big enough to hold two, three or four apartments in some cases. We need to ensure that we can get a grant for each of those. If it means getting a vacant property up and running and getting people living in, it is worth doing. We also need to consider planning exemptions for that and not letting people get caught up too long in the planning process. For example, over an old shop or a pub there may have been one family unit living in one residential unit and there might be scope for that to become two different residential units. We should not get caught up in unnecessary planning delays because of that. Of course, fire safety will come into it and we have to meet the highest of requirements but we need to get this grant up and running straight away and we need to try to deal with these issues and troubleshoot them before they become an issue in the grant process.

I welcome some of the movements that have been made to date on log cabins or modular homes. I will give an example of a young person in rural Ireland who is taking over the family farm. The price of building at the moment is just prohibitive for them. They might even have invested in the farm and have quite a bit of debt. Building a home straight off the mark might not be an option for them but there might be an option for a log cabin type of build. Maybe that is not the proper terminology to use considering that these units are far more than what we consider a traditional log cabin to be. Planning is far too restrictive for that. I welcome the discussion to date on log cabin units or modular units behind property similar to the planning exemptions in place for extensions but there is scope to go beyond that. If planning requirements can be met, if they can meet their wastewater treatment capacity whether it is a private storage tank or they have connection to a mains supply, and if other services are in place, then in circumstances that deserve planning, we should consider planning permission for those log cabins. There is scope in this regard that would at least give young people a start in life when it comes to having a home of their own.

The first home scheme has not worked as well as it could to date in Tipperary. The cap for the scheme is €350,000 in the county. In County Kilkenny, it is €400,000; in County Limerick, it is €425,000; and in County Waterford, it is €375,000. It is very hard for a Tipperary county councillor, or for anyone, to tell a property developer to come to the county and build a private estate when the cap under the scheme is €350,000. The developers could go to any town or city in those neighbouring counties and very easily be guaranteed a higher price. This is not to say that the cap should be the target but it is not allowing any bit of wriggle room. As a result, we are not seeing the first home scheme take off in the way we should in Tipperary. Those who would develop houses are going to be incentivised to go to the county right next door or just cross the county bounds next door.

I will also touch on the delivery of affordable and social housing. We have seen a great appetite for the delivery of social housing and we need to see much more. Our targets need to be far more ambitious. We are not seeing the same delivery of affordable housing. We have not seen affordable housing schemes take off in Tipperary to date. Let us consider the young couple who may be working and who are above the income threshold for a social home but their income is below what the private market is demanding. They are caught in that trap. We need that affordable housing scheme in place in the likes of Nenagh, Thurles and Roscrea to deliver for those families.

My home was originally a council house built in the 1930s. It is an old house on an acre. My parents bought it in the 1980s and built a home for us from that. I fully acknowledge the need for social housing in this country and I would like to see more of it but we cannot continue to forget about those who are caught in the affordability trap, especially working couples and younger families, who do not qualify for social housing but who need assistance through an affordable scheme.

Finally, I will touch on the four-stage process. I am aware that some work is being done to try to bring it back to a single stage. We are in a housing crisis. We should not be stage after stage waiting for social houses to be built. Local authorities should be given the drive on to deliver the houses we need and not to wade through a bureaucratic mess of report after report and stages where people are not getting the answers we need. We need those houses built, they should be built through a single process and they should be built rapidly by feeling the sense of urgency that we feel in this Chamber to get those houses delivered.

Deputy Thomas Gould

I want to talk about a lady in my constituency who spent six years on the housing list and on the rental accommodation scheme, RAS. She is to be evicted on 10 April. Because of the sky-high house prices in Cork, the council is not allowed to buy the house under the tenant in situ scheme. The council has said the landlord is looking for too much. This lady has three children, the youngest of whom is three. This is the only home they know. This year, instead of Easter egg hunting and having a happy Easter, this family will be packing their bags. Where are they going to go on 10 April? Where will this lady and her three children live? She has no idea and no one has a solution for her. Can the House imagine the trauma that will be caused to those children if they have to go into emergency accommodation? When we look at them, it is the result of Government policy. Let us imagine how that lady felt when she saw the Taoiseach having a laugh and a joke with Donald Trump about how great things are in Ireland and the housing crisis. She was crying in front of me. She was crying because she will be homeless on 10 April. She was looking at the Taoiseach having a laugh and a joke. Where was this woman in all of this?

Not alone this, I know another gentleman who has been 15 years on the list. He is facing eviction in June. When he went on the list, his three children were aged two, five and six. Now they are 17, 20 and 21. Their whole childhood was spent in insecure housing as a result of Government policy. They spent their childhood never being secure in a home.

I will leave the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, with a few comments. The Central Bank says the Government will miss its targets for the next three years. We know the Government's figures for last year were made up. The whole place knows that was a con. That was proved today when Deputy Mary Lou McDonald asking the Taoiseach a question. Four times the Taoiseach refused to answer the question about whether he knew the figures that came out last year and whether the Minister for Finance told him

I am dealing with a family who are going to be evicted on 20 August, with three children on the spectrum. These three children will be homeless on 20 August. I have another mother with two children on the spectrum, with one child having sickle cell disease and they will be evicted on 29 April. I also know of another family. I have a list of them here. They are all being evicted because of Government policies. We are asking the Government for once to listen to Sinn Féin. We are coming along with ideas and solutions because the Government is out of them.

Deputy Pádraig Mac Lochlainn

I want to talk to the Minister of State but the issue of defective concrete blocks, not just in my home county of Donegal but in the west of Ireland. As he knows, the National Standards Authority of Ireland is tasked with coming up with a standard we can trust. Why is this a crucial issue now?

When we go to hospital and we have a cancer diagnosis, we trust the diagnosis and the prognosis is trusted to try to heal ourselves and get back to a place we want to be. However, we have a diagnosis however called IS 465, which is the standard that nobody trusts or stands over. We cannot, therefore, trust the prognosis. We cannot trust the remediation which the Government is asking the person to take. People are being asked to take down just the outer leaf of their houses when the whole house probably has to be demolished and rebuilt again. We have an issue that does not just affect people who are living in defective block homes but the entire housing market across most of Donegal. In my county, or example, in a very profound way, people cannot buy or sell a house without ensuring that they do not have defective concrete blocks. Lots of houses, however, are being misdiagnosed. These are houses that are actually perfectly fine, which could be sold and which people could purchase in a housing crisis and they cannot be because we have a standard we cannot trust.

The NSAI has again delayed again and again and everything is in a state of flux in the county. Our housing market is a perfect storm. We have the same crisis across all of Ireland but we now have this defective block crisis in the middle of it all. I am asking that collectively we urge a sense of emergency and urge the NSAI to publish its draft amendments to the standard soon. It would then go to public consultation and this could drag on and on. We do not have another six months or a year, for sure. I am asking that the Minister of State invests a sense of urgency in tackling and dealing with this and for him to understand that this standard IS 465 is a disaster, people do not trust it and we need a new one we can trust based on authoritative science this time, not a desktop study.

Deputy Pearse Doherty

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach Gníomhach and I welcome the opportunity to say a cúpla focal ar an tuarascáil seo. Sa chéad dul síos tá sé ráite sa tuarascáil seo go gcaithfí céim úr a ghlacadh ó thaobh cúrsaí tithíochta mar tá a fhios againn ón méid atá ag tarlú agus an méid a thit amach leis an Rialtas go bhfuil teip iomlán ar an Rialtas ó thaobh cúrsaí tithíochta de. Cífimid praghsanna ag dul in airde agus le feiceáil arís inniu. Tá praghsanna suas 9% agus cífimid líon gan dídean níos mó anois ná mar a bhí riamh agus 4,500 páiste gan dídean sa Stát seo. Is mór an náire go bhfuil sé sin ag titim amach faoi Fhianna Fáil agus Fine Gael. Cífimid go leor daoine, go háirithe daoine óga, nach bhfuil faic acu agus gan deis acu teach a thógáil nó a cheannach ina gcuid ceantar is acu féin, ina na dtír is acu féin agus is é sin an fáth go bhfuilimid ag feiceáil an oiread sin daoine thar sáile ar fud na cruinne, daoine óga agus iad ag tógáil fréamhacha i dtíortha coimhthíocha. It is because of this Government's failure on housing that we see such a large scattering of our young people, people who have no hope in this Government turning the corner on the issues of housing.

We see in the past week the big lie that was at the heart of the general election. The Government, so embarrassed at its own failure, deliberately went out and misled the Irish public on what it believed it is going to achieve last year. We now know from documents released under freedom of information requests that the Minister for Finance was fully aware. After analysing all of the data available to the Department of Finance at the time, it concluded that the 40,000 figure that was being articulated here on the floor of the Dáil, where the Minister of State is now sitting, was not achievable. The Minister for Finance got up two days before he received that document and said that 40,000 houses would be delivered by the end of the year. The experts in his Department give him a document stating that 40,000 houses was not achievable and indeed that the Government might actually deliver fewer homes than the previous year, which is exactly what happened. What did the Minister for Finance do? Two days later he went on the national airwaves and he told mistruths to the Irish people. The week after that he did it again and again. The Taoiseach did it, the Tánaiste did it, and the Minister for housing at the time, Darragh O'Brien, did it. Countless others told the same big lie that was told to the public, which was that the delivery of 40,000 houses was achievable when everybody knew it was not.

That is important because the Government's plan is based on dishonesty. It continues to argue that its plan is working, that it has turned the corner and that things are now changing in housing. The only thing that is changing in housing is that it is getting more expensive to own your home. There are more children in emergency accommodation and more families have had their lives ripped up in our emergency accommodation. It is now dearer to pay rent than ever before. That is the only thing that is changing under Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. We now need the Government to be honest with regard to the big lie it told in the general election but also to be honest that it is out of ideas on housing and that it needs to listen to the plan that we in Sinn Féin, through Deputy Eoin Ó Broin, have to turn this disaster into delivering not only the houses we need at scale but also to ensure that they are affordable for ordinary working families across the State.

Deputy Natasha Newsome Drennan

The ordinary people of counties Carlow and Kilkenny are paying the price of the failures of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Month after month, the housing crisis deepens. Average rents in Carlow and Kilkenny are almost €1,600 a month, which is a staggering burden for workers and families.

Scores of people want to build or buy their own home across Kilkenny. They have worked hard and saved up but because of the failures of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, they have been denied that opportunity. These workers and families are being locked indefinitely into paying ridiculous rents and are denied the security of a home of their own because of the Government's actions.

As most people know, basic infrastructure such as sewage and water treatment are fundamental in the provision of communities. Sewage and water treatment facilities are also a fundamental requirement of expanding communities and building new homes. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, in their wisdom, did not see fit to provide the necessary investment in the upgrading of facilities across Kilkenny and Carlow. As a result, many prime sites for building are left untouched, with building homes around most towns in Kilkenny no longer an option, leaving towns and communities paralysed in terms of any potential to grow and expand.

Bennetsbridge is the next town due to see the upgrade of services and works with these works are not planned to start until 2029. Until these works are completed, communities in south Kilkenny like my own village of Knocktopher, Ballyhale and Mullinavat will see no new developments being built.

A generation is being locked out of home ownership and at this rate my grandchildren's generation will not even stand a chance.

How has this Government constantly failed to plan for the future needs of towns and villages across rural Ireland? No wonder this Government missed its housing targets. Some 10,000 fewer homes were built than were promised last year. How many more thousands will it be this year? How many more times will the public be misled on housing targets and reports, all the while the public are losing hope that the current Government have any interest in solving the housing crisis?

On St. Patrick's Day, I was honoured to walk in the parade with The Good Shepherd Centre Kilkenny, which provide services for women, men and families experiencing or at risk of homelessness. How many more years will communities across Kilkenny and Carlow be left behind because of the incompetence of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael?

Deputy Ann Graves

I acknowledge the members of the commission for producing such a detailed and thought-provoking report. It offers a serious critique of the previous Government as well as the current one. The commission's report states that there have been systematic failures and ineffective decision-making in the Government's housing policy but this only confirms what we already know.

The report also states that the mandarins were merely reacting to the housing crisis and that risk aversion dominates. As a former councillor for the Sword's area and a TD for Fingal East, I spend much of my time making representations on behalf of households across the constituency who are stuck on the housing list or in emergency accommodation.

A majority of our constituency office work is focused on housing. Some families face homelessness for a second or, indeed, a third time in their lives. Despite what An Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, or Donald Trump think, this is not a laughing matter. There is nothing normal about a housing crisis but as the commission states, "only a radical, strategic reset of housing policy will work.". I ask the Minister for housing to stop sleepwalking through the housing crisis and shake off the conservative approach of his predecessors.

One important action that the Minister could take would be to reintroduce the tenant in situ scheme, which has played a positive role in preventing hundreds of adults and children from entering homelessness. There is no tenant in situ in place right now. I am concerned that proposed restrictions to the scheme will reduce the ability of the councils to do everything they can to prevent people from losing their home. I am also concerned that the capital allocation for 2025 will be less than the final spend on the scheme in 2024.

I understand that the Minister for housing will sign off on the final shape of the scheme before the end of the month and I urge him to provide Fingal County Council with the maximum amount of flexibility on the operation of the scheme and adequate funding to support tenants at risk of homelessness. I could give numerous examples of people who are in a situation where Fingal County Council has not entered into buying properties simply because the tenant in situ scheme prevents it. Many of these are people who are now going to end up in a homeless situation. I ask the Minister to please wake up to the housing crisis and reintroduce the tenant in situ scheme today.

Deputy Marie Sherlock

I very much welcome the opportunity to speak on what was a groundbreaking report by the Housing Commission. I join in acknowledging the members of that Housing Commission who gave their time and service to the State. While we might not necessarily agree with all the recommendations in that report, certainly the time and effort that went into it was enormous and it is a huge disrespect that the Government has effectively ignored that report since publication.

Listening to Leaders' Questions today, I found myself almost getting increasingly upset at the clap on the back attitude we see from Government week in, week out on its own efforts to meet the huge housing need in our State. We are expected to be grateful and wondrous that social housing output is supposedly back at 1970s levels or back to the early 2000s levels but that is not something to celebrate, that is something to be ashamed of. The reality is that social housing output per capita now is approximately a third of what it was back in the 1970s. If we consider that household size is considerably smaller now than what it was then, our social housing output relative to the enormous need of our country appears to be all the more anemic.

There has been an awful lot spoken about the Housing Commission recommendations and I do not propose to go into great detail on them other than to say a number of key things before the point I really want to get to which is in terms of the constituency I represent, Dublin Central. The Government is not serious about dereliction and there are communities finding themselves increasingly broken looking at properties where there has been no action taken year in, year out. It is because we have a derelict site tax that is not worth the paper it is written on. In fact, it has been designed to fail - that has been acknowledged by the Department of Finance - in terms of the amount of money it expects to raise. It is because of the weakness of our CPO laws and the initiatives that are currently there and how the funding is put in place. Effectively, people need to have that money up front to avail of the vacant home grant and the €20,000 extra for a house if it is derelict. That needs to change. Ultimately, people are at the pin of their collar as it is to buy a house, even if it is vacant or derelict. They simply do not have the money to go on and renovate it.

The second key thing is on the dominance of institutional investors, particularly in this city. We need know we need apartments and that apartments are the future of living in Dublin but we have to ask a serious question. Do we want it dominated by institutional investors or do we want a different model? When we listen to the Government, it seems it wants to encourage greater institutional investor dominance with regard to the ownership of private rented accommodation in this country. I do not believe that is the way to go because of the impact that has in terms of the raising of rents and the potential exploitation of renters. In Dublin Central, 49% of people are in private rented accommodation. We hear all the talk about the first-time buyers grant or whatever but that is not even relevant because you cannot even buy a first-time home in the constituency in Dublin city centre and in the areas adjoining it. We need to see a much greater number of cost-rental and affordable purchase schemes. We have only one such scheme in Dublin Central at this point in time.

The last big point I will make before getting into the issue is on the Government supports to those in distress. It is a pity I will not be able to contribute to the Sinn Féin motion on cost rental this evening, but there is the issue of funding and also the issue of standards. While the tenant in situ scheme is great in theory, my experience on Dublin City Council is that it very much fails in practice because the standards are set so high. It needs to meet the city council standards before the local authority can consider purchasing it, thereby excluding the vast majority of people who go in housing distress. Despite the willingness of the owner of that house to sell to Dublin City Council, they are rejected because the house simply is not up to standard. These people have nowhere else to go and we need to see a much greater investment into the repair and lease scheme because that is the game changer for those houses in distress that qualify for HAP and are liveable, but maybe are not up to local authority standards. This would afford people the chance to stay in those houses.

The issues I want to go into this evening are some we are seeing in the rental sector. Obviously, the Residential Tenancies Act 2004 was specifically set up to govern how rent is set in this country but over the nine sections of that Bill and the 148 references to rent, there is not a single definition of rent. For the vast majority of people, the concept of rent is a relatively straightforward concept in terms of the payment covering the roof over their head and the ability to use the amenities in the house or the apartment. For some, the lack of a definition of rent has been exploited by landlords to put in vague concepts of additional charges. The absence of a definition of rent is leaving vulnerable and desperate renters wide open for exploitation.

A case in point are the School Yard apartments in Dublin 1, owned by the Irish Residential Properties Real Estate Investment Trust, IRES REIT. There are 61 units and some new tenants have been charged €150 in additional common area charges. One tenant, late last year, actually challenged the landlord and it went to mediation in the RTB. Guess what? IRES REIT backed down. Now, our understanding is that IRES REIT has persisted in charging other, unsuspecting renters that same charge. Even though it backed down when it was challenged in the RTB, for others who have not fought back, it has continued in trying to pursue and persist with charging others. It is a reflection of the level of desperation on the part of renters out there that they are paying whatever they are being charged but it is not right. It is pure greed on the part of the REIT.

I have a second example of a woman who came to me to say she was offered HAP at €1,937 per month. That is what the landlord put on her form but, of course, then a secret deal was struck where she has to pay €100 per month extra for storage. She is distraught. She does not have that money but she also has no choice here. If she walks away from that arrangement, she has nowhere else to live because again, there are so many landlords not accepting HAP out there, particularly with rents well in excess of €2,000 in the Dublin city area. That woman has no choice. She could complain and she could get it resolved, but is she going to do that? She will try to find that extra €100 because, effectively, she has nowhere else to live.

Back in 2021, the Labour Party brought forward legislation, a renters' rights Bill, to provide for a rent register which would effectively provide rent transparency. That was never taken on but that would resolve a huge number of the issues with regard to the exploitation of desperate renters out there.

It would also resolve the annual head-scratching that goes on when we see that rents are increasing by rates that are multiples of what is provided for within the RPZ legislation, even when we factor in the share that goes to new tenancies.

The other key and more immediate demand we would make here is that the RTB also has to play a role in publicly flagging to renters when there are landlords of a particular size. We want to look after those small landlords, those who are doing the right thing, but for those who are engaging in egregious behaviour like the behaviour I set out by IRES REIT, we need to make sure that the RTB has a mechanism to flag to the public that egregious behaviour, at least to send a warning. We understand that if there is a complaint and an investigation under Part 7A of the legislation, the RTB has the power to publish the sanction, but if it goes to mediation, it is a secret deal and nobody knows about it. Only the renter who is brave enough to stand up gets the benefit from that arrangement and nobody else. That has to change.

My appeal to the Minister of State is a tiny thing, a drop in the ocean, in terms of the greater need with regard to housing out there. We cannot allow renter exploitation to continue. As it is, rents are exorbitantly high and we have REITs complaining that they are not even getting the market rate that they should be entitled to. We need to put in place greater protections. It is not even talking about tenure or anything else; it is talking about ensuring that a rent is a rent and that this is clearly defined in legislation.

Deputy Joe Neville

I am delighted to be able to speak on this extremely important topic. It has been the major national issue for a number of years. As a county councillor in Kildare, I saw that at first hand. I saw it from the point of view of the person who could not get a house, obtain zoning for land or build a house. We have seen planning permissions come in. In some locations, the people have been against them and in others people have been for them, so delivering houses, as we know, is very complex. A commission report like this tries to deal with the larger issues and to cut across the issue. We know it is an impossible task just to try to crystallise what is happening in housing development and the construction industry more widely, but the commission report has succeeded in some elements, and we should welcome such a report. Many people with a lot of knowledge across a really wide spectrum have delivered it and, in fairness, it is a huge document covering a range of areas.

I will focus on three areas because we could discuss the whole issue in general and go on for a while, but it is important to focus on the report, not just to have a discussion on housing and pick different topics. We should try to parse the report down to individual areas. Today, I will just try to focus on infrastructure, affordable housing and creating sustainable communities.

Infrastructure delivery, as well as having affordable housing realistically in nice, good and sustainable communities, will be key for the people who will live in our areas. In Kildare North, we have a huge number of houses being delivered. I see my colleague Aidan Farrelly sitting across the way. In Leixlip today, there are houses being built. If we go to Celbridge, there are houses being built. In Kilcock, there are houses being built. In Clane, there are houses being built. Everywhere you turn, including Naas and Sallins, there are houses being built. However, we need to deliver those houses properly and put them in good community space, ensuring that people can move around and that we have the bridges, the schools, the crèches and the water infrastructure to go with the housing. At the weekend, people were talking about St. Patrick's Day and getting ready to celebrate. In Leixlip, there was a burst water pipe on Saturday afternoon. This meant that 7,700 homes were left without water for more than 24 hours. Meanwhile, over in Celbridge and Hazelhatch, there is another pipe that is 6.5 km long and 80 years old. It was put in place in 1945. That pipe is at such risk of bursting that the water pressure has to be run really low. What I am highlighting is the need for basic infrastructure in north Kildare to deliver this housing.

As regards the commission report, while there is a point about infrastructure - I think it is in section 7 of chapter 3 - there is probably not enough focus on it. Infrastructure could have taken up a larger section of the commission's report. As many of us have seen, if the infrastructure is not delivered, it will be impossible to deliver houses. In that context, there is one bridge in Celbridge. It was there 200 years or 150 years ago, when the population might have been 300 to 500. The population of Celbridge, which Mark Ward and Eoin Ó Broin know because they live right across from it, is 23,000. The town still has only one bridge. Does that make for sustainable communities? It does not. Sustainable communities are dealt with in one of the final chapters of the report. Critical infrastructure must be provided to enable us to deliver housing.

I am thrilled and honoured to have been elected to the Dáil, but I want to continue to work on the projects on which I worked as a councillor. As part of the local area plan in Celbridge, we put in a submission for a second bridge. We know that it had to come with zoning of land. Until a second bridge is provided, we cannot open land up for development in Celbridge. There is a perfect example of where if we get a bridge built, zoning can be opened up and we can deliver over 2,000 houses. That is where there has to be a key combination. That is where the commission report could have gone into greater detail and provided really specific examples. I did not really see that in the report.

I have expressed these sentiments since I got elected and came here, and that is what I have been pushing through from a Government perspective. I know I am sitting here on the Government benches but I am trying to give solutions to individual issues and to show, as councillors, and now as TDs, where we can deliver not just housing but sustainable housing. In towns like Lucan, close to me, and we see it even in Clane, where a bridge is built and houses come and traffic is at a gridlock, we know it is not sustainable. In Adamstown, a link road has been built in through Celbridge. That link road has come in many years after those houses have been built. We know it has been needed but it should have been put in much earlier. That is where the tie-in with the councils and the Government, specifically the Department of Transport, needs to be.

The other area on which I will focus is affordable housing, which is key in an area like mine, in north Kildare. It is key across the country so I will not say it is just in my area but I will use the example of where we had an affordable housing scheme in Leixlip, close to where I live, in an estate where we rezoned the land under the most recent local area plan. As all Members know, the market value of the property has to be under €360,000 to avail of affordable housing, but we cannot get the home loans for the same amount. There seems to be a bit of a disconnect in what is available for the public. Gardaí, nurses and people who might be in marriages now need second houses. We need to make sure there is affordable housing available for those people, and that has not been the case.

In north Kildare, we can see there has been movement. I see it locally, in my home area, and where I have been a councillor, where Clúid have been involved and where we have other housing agencies. The council has done well and worked with local builders to get extra housing, but then what we see is that the other housing in the same areas is there for €500,000 or €600,000. Many people in normal, good, strong jobs and couples cannot get the mortgages to buy those houses. We need to extend and make larger the affordable housing schemes. While they are welcome, they need to be rolled out, and there needs to be stronger Government support. I know that Kieran O'Donnell, when he was a Minister of State in the area, would have had the same opinion, would have pushed for it and would have strongly focused on the delivery and roll-out of more affordable housing. It is a key issue. The average cost of a home, as I said, is over €450,000, and that is all across the north east of the county. The local authority home loan is a bit of a help but it will not get you to that point. Looking at housing in north Kildare in particular, we have Maynooth University, which is expanding, but if we are restricted as to what housing we can put in the likes of Maynooth, all we are doing is making it harder and harder for us to be able to have enough housing for the area.

On the wider point, many of us have families. Even if we do not, we have our elderly, so we need parks and community spaces. This is something else in the report that we really need to focus on. It was probably not in the report to the degree I would have liked, but, again, it is something I am heavily emphasising in my role. We could say it is up to the councils to deliver these elements, but it is really national funding that needs to come in behind local community groups and councils, which actually deliver things like swimming pools. There was maybe one in Lucan, but we can see there were difficulties getting that out there. There is no swimming pool in north Kildare at all. There is one in Naas, but there is no such facility in the whole of north Kildare. Where are the football pitches going to be to serve all the new houses in the likes of Maynooth, Celbridge and those places? These are all key issues that also need to be behind a wider commission report and structure like this. If we just put up houses and more houses in certain areas, we will not necessarily have the community supports behind them. Ultimately, steps need to be taken. Sometimes, however, steps taken in haste can be taken incorrectly. We have seen this in the past. We know we need to deliver on the 256,000 homes deficit from when the report was initiated. We know the deficit will continue if we do not succeed in driving increased housing provision every year. It is in the programme for Government and is the key focus.

While the Minister is here, I ask him to keep a focus on the requirement for the delivery of the key infrastructure for north Kildare, including the delivery of affordable housing and to ensure that the people in new affordable homes serviced by proper infrastructure will live in sustainable communities. I am thankful and delighted to have had the opportunity to speak in front of the Minister today.

Deputy Mark Ward

It has been well documented in this House that you cannot call a person a liar in the Dáil, so I will refrain from doing so in what I have to say. Micheál Martin misled the people of Ireland in the recent election campaign, Simon Harris spoofed them and Jack Chambers simply told big, fat porky pies to them. They misled the electorate in saying they would build 40,000 homes. They knew this was not going to happen, yet this was what they told the people of Ireland in the lead-up to the general election. I have no faith that the housing crisis will be solved under this Government. It simply does not have the will or the ability to clean up the mess it made.

A prime example of these proposed changes and cuts is the tenant in situ scheme. It is not often that the Government gets things right when it comes to housing but, under pressure from Sinn Féin and other Opposition parties, the former Minister for housing, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, was forced to reopen the tenant in situ scheme. What does the Government do when it gets something right? It moves the goalposts. Since April 2023, the tenant in situ scheme has saved around 2,500 households from being made homeless. In my area, South Dublin County Council has acquired 118 homes for families through the tenant in situ scheme. These 118 homes are for families with children, couples, single people and pensioners. These tenants all received notices to quit from their landlords and were in real danger of becoming homeless. Since January, this support has been suspended for new applications due to the failure of the outgoing Government to agree funding allocations for 2025. The Government is proposing a series of restrictions to the operation of the scheme, which would result in fewer purchases this year than last year. These restrictions are unnecessary and unwarranted.

I was at a recent meeting with representatives of South Dublin County Council who informed me they have 71 homes approved for purchase under the tenant in situ scheme. Any funding restrictions or restrictions in how this scheme is operated could result in these 71 families becoming homeless. What does the Government say to these families who have been in this process sometimes for over a year? How do these parents explain to their children that they will have to go into emergency accommodation? What does the Government say to the landlords who entered this process in good faith? Later tonight, Sinn Féin will bring forward a motion from my colleague, Deputy Ó Broin, to fully fund the tenant in situ scheme, but I believe there is a proposed amendment to make it mean absolutely nothing. I ask, therefore, those from all parties and none to support our motion tonight and not to go with the amendments the Government has proposed. The Government got something right with the tenant in situ scheme. It has a chance to keep it going for the rest of this term.

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

I thank Deputy Ward. I will just say that some of the remarks he made are not acceptable.

Deputy Mark Ward

If I had said them as Gaeilge, would they have been all right?

An Leas-Cheann Comhairle

No. The Deputy knows the point I am making. I ask him to take note of it. I am saying it because I want to put it on the record that he was wrong to do what he did. I call Deputy Farrelly.

Deputy Aidan Farrelly

I am thankful to have the opportunity to speak on the report today. The discourse on housing is often influenced by numbers, namely the number of people experiencing homelessness, the number of homes delivered below the Government's target in 2024, the falling number of planning permissions and commencement notices, the number of workers and apprentices needed, the number of recommendations in the commission's report and the number of years people have spent in family hubs. Ultimately, numbers will never do the extremity of this worsening crisis any justice at all.

I am only going to speak about one recommendation from the report because it goes to the heart of the issue. It is to recognise and prioritise dealing with Ireland's housing deficit and to address it through emergency action. I reflect on how this Government has recognised and prioritised this issue with emergency action. It is difficult to identify many highlights, is it not? Since the election, we have heard rumours about abolishing rent pressure zones, about glorified sheds being exempt from planning and about the tenant in situ scheme being squandered and we have seen evidence of housing targets being knowingly missed and abandoned, none of which made it to anyone's election manifestos, by the way.

Successive Governments have chosen not to address the housing emergency in Ireland through emergency action but to close their eyes and hope the private market will make this problem go away. We know, though, that the private market will only prioritise making profits. That is fine. It is its purpose and it is your collective ideology. My issue, however, is with the naive approach the Government would take in expecting Part V housing or social leasing to suffice when it comes to increasing the social housing stock in any sort of comprehensive or sustainable way. It has not to date and it will not in the future.

Just today, our Taoiseach spoke about nobody in this House having the monopoly on care or empathy when it comes to housing. Do you know what? He is right. What the Government has now is a monopoly on power. What is it going to do with it? In whose interest is it going to make this emergency any better? This Government has the power to make the changes so desperately needed to increase our housing stock in a way commensurate with this recommendation to treat it for what it is, an emergency. The housing narrative might be influenced by numbers, but these numbers are people. They are people who deserve an opportunity, hope and a State response that prioritises them over the profits of others. Otherwise, there is another number. This number is another Government that fails them.

Deputy Séamus McGrath

I thank the Minister for being here for the debate. We have already spoken at length since the formation of this Dáil about the housing crisis. We all accept that the one thing we can all agree on is that it is a very acute crisis. Certainly, it is a crisis that has deepened in recent years and we must find solutions to it. We will agree that whatever about individual measures, housing supply is ultimately the only solution to resolve this issue. We saw the report from the Central Bank today where the increase in property prices in the past 12 months was 8.1%. It is very significant. Obviously, it is damning news for people trying to get on the property ladder because it feels as if it is being put further and further out of their reach. That is very concerning for those people. However, it is a simple fact of economic supply and demand that if your demand is up at a high level and your supply is at a low level, prices are going to increase. There will be price inflation, whether this is in terms of house purchase prices or house rental costs.

That is what we are seeing. The Government needs to be radical in its approach to resolving this issue. The Housing Commission argued that there has to be a radical step change in approach. I commend the Government on the programme for Government which sets out ambitious measures and targets for housing. Every single one needs to be implemented as quickly as possible.

Touching on the issue of supply in more detail, brownfield sites and apartments are a key reason housing delivery last year was not what we expected it to be. Unfortunately, the delivery of apartments fell off a cliff edge. That resulted in the overall number being significantly down on what we expected. We have to delve into that issue in further detail and ask how is it that apartment blocks can be built across Europe but for some reason in Ireland it is proving very difficult. We have to ask those hard questions and get the answers. They have to be part of the solution. Of course, they will not be suitable for everyone looking to buy or rent a home but they are part of the solution to providing accommodation in city centres. Often, people live in traditional starter homes, such as a three-bed semi or three-bed townhouse, who would be quite content in an apartment in a city but those options are not there for them. It is part of the solution and we have to look at it.

On unlocking some of the key blockages in supply, I listened to some of this debate already, and Uisce Éireann was mentioned quite a lot. We all are aware of examples of Uisce Éireann and the difficulties it causes. I heard examples where preconnection queries have taken several months, leading to huge frustration among those trying to deliver housing. That has to be sped up. It has to happen faster. We saw the recent storm that will undoubtedly result in ESB Networks, for example, falling behind on its scheduled tasks and it will now have a backlog. We have to watch that as well. Our utility companies and service providers are key issues. If we are genuinely trying to increase housing supply, they have to work hand in hand with developers, local authorities and others trying to deliver on housing supply and, of course, other forms of infrastructure such as transportation networks and so on. We have to take a targeted approach to funding utilisation to deliver on housing. It has to be so targeted that the end result is all about delivery of housing. The planning process is another issue. I commend the previous Government on the planning Act which sets forward significant reform of planning. We need to see those changes implemented as soon as possible. The reality is a lot of potential residential permissions are locked in An Bord Pleanála because those decisions are waiting for action. Those changes must be made. While the planning Act needs to be progressed and its measures implemented, we must do whatever we can do in the short term to bring about quicker decisions in residential cases. It is about prioritising residential developments at the end of the day because we face the most severe housing crisis in a generation. We need to deliver on housing and getting those decisions out is part of the solution.

I already spoke to the Minister about development levies, which need to be looked at. Nobody wants to give a blank pass to developers but that you would charge a levy on development when you are in the middle of a housing crisis does not add up. It has to be designed in such a way that it is about early delivery and housing stock being delivered at the earliest possible opportunity. It is not necessarily a case of giving a pass on development levies and letting completions come at any point in the future. It needs to be targeted and designed such that it results in early delivery of units because that it what we need to achieve.

Vacancy is also part of this debate. The first thing I want to mention is local authority stock. We all know there is a swathe of properties across the country lying vacant for significant periods of time, owned by us as a State and the local authorities. That is simply unacceptable when we face such an acute housing crisis. I know of many cases in my constituency where properties have been sitting idle for the best part of 12 months. That is ludicrous and illogical. It is impossible to defend. I ask the Minister to take a hands-on approach in dealing with the chief executives of local authorities to address that issue once and for all. Having come from being a councillor for many years, councillors continuously raise this issue but for some reason we do not get the traction or progress we would like. That time has to come to an end and we have to see delivery. To move away from local authority stock to private properties lying vacant and derelict, we have to look at the measures in place to try to activate them. The derelict sites levy is not working to the extent it needs to. It needs to be reviewed. Local authorities need to be more aggressive in compulsory purchase orders to send a clear signal to people holding on to properties and doing nothing with them in town and village centres that it will not be acceptable any longer. Many of them are owned by financial institutions, receivers and so on. We need to send a direct message that they have to act on those properties, either sell them, bring them back into use or do something. That they be left sitting there as a blight in our communities is not good enough. I ask the Minister to look at that.

The vacant homes tax also needs to be reviewed. I am aware of a case in my constituency where there is a row of properties lying vacant. To the best of my knowledge, those properties are not being taxed or levied in any way simply because they are not deemed habitable. If it is not deemed habitable, it does not fall under the tax. They are not deemed derelict because the owners cleverly presented them in a such a way that they no longer meet the description of dereliction. Those properties have been sitting there for many years with no action in respect of them and there is no penalty from the local authority or the State. That must be looked at.

The over-the-shop proposal in the programme for Government is welcome. I echo other Deputies that it needs to be progressed as quickly as possible. We must seriously look at downsizing options. There is significant underutilisation of residential property in this country. If there are genuine options for older people, they will vacate larger properties and free them up for younger families, possibly their own. The proposed garden development is part of the solution in that it can create a downsizing option and meet the social needs of families, where one family can live close to the other. It is part of the solution but a clear policy needs to be put in place. I do not think going down the road of the exemptions is necessarily the right way. We need to put a planning policy in place to create sustainable development into the future, which we have to do as well. While we are in a crisis, we have to develop in such a way to meet our sustainability goals.

The rezoning of land is important. I do not think any of us want to see wholesale rezoning but we need to take a very targeted approach to try to deliver increased land supply for developers to get on with developing where there is serviced land and land that is suitable for development. Tomorrow, I will speak to the Minister about what I consider the trapped cohort of people above the social housing limits and below the ability to acquire a property either to rent or for affordable purchase in their own right. I will not go into that in great detail this evening but I want to set it as a goal of mine in politics to address that cohort of people. It is a growing cohort which has no support from the State at present. We are all regularly contacted by them and unfortunately we cannot give them the answers they want because they simply fall between the stools at the moment. I will speak more on that tomorrow.

The continuation of the help to buy and first home schemes is welcome but unfortunately now many developments fall outside of the first home scheme because house prices have increased. It is a balancing act; we do not want to chase house prices necessarily but at the same time it is a scheme for first-time buyers. In many cases, it is no longer available to them because house prices have increased so much. Cost rental is another area. I said to the Minister in the past that many local authorities are turning away from cost rental because of how the system is designed, which we must also address because we have to address both the purchase and rental sectors and make them more affordable. My time is up. I will address the other issue further in the morning in questions to the Minister.

Deputy Pa Daly

The most deeply frustrating part of this job is dealing with daily devastating stories of people who exist in utter despair and anxiety because they see no light at the end of the tunnel. When I came into the Chamber today, I received a text from a man in his 60s who was living in his family home which is now being sold. He told me he is in a state of limbo because he has not been on the list for a sufficient number of years. He would need to be 15 or 16 years on the list before he would be considered. He is looking at going into emergency accommodation - a man in his mid-60s. We also deal almost weekly with people under notice to quit, whose homes are being sold, who have young families - often, their children have disabilities - and many people waiting more than 12 years on the list.

The absence of one-bedroom and two-bedroom accommodation is a crisis. It all goes back to the post-crash period when the Fine Gael-led Government stopped building social housing and hoped that the market, which had mostly provided three-bedroom semi-detached houses, would mop up the problem but it has not. The abolition of the town councils did not help either.

This Housing Commission report is a damning indictment of the Government's failed approach to housing. The Government tried to ignore it for nearly a year but it cannot ignore the facts. We have never been in a worse position. For over ten years now ordinary workers and families have been living in crisis whereby securing a roof over one's head is nearly impossible. The dream of having a home of one's own seems like pure fantasy. Year in, year out every single housing target is missed and the number of people experiencing homelessness has reached record heights. Rents, too, are at record levels and many feel that they have to emigrate, that it is their only escape.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have shown us time and again that they have no intention of solving the housing crisis. The fundamental approach of the Government of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Independents is to just build more expensive units and that will solve the problem. The Government is failing to deal with the need for more social housing, particularly one-bedroom and two-bedroom houses. That is what is required for the people who are coming to my office feeling anxious, in despair and filled with worry. This Government cares more about saving face than about the suffering of ordinary people. This utter disregard for the plight of these people is what allowed the Government to intentionally mislead the public during the general election campaign. It is also what allows the Government to brush off today's stark warning from the Central Bank, ignore the Housing Commission report and allow the problems that have beset this country for the past ten or 15 years in particular to continue.

Deputy Seamus Healy

The right to housing is a human right, enshrined in Article 25 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The UN rapporteur on the right to housing reiterated that position, saying that although increasingly viewed as a commodity, housing is, most importantly, a human right. The Housing Commission report seeks to vindicate that human right. It says that housing must be a unique, national priority. It talks about the failure to treat housing as a critical social and economic priority and goes on to say: "Only a radical strategic reset of housing policy will work." It further says: "It is critical that this housing deficit is addressed through emergency action."

It has been said that the housing crisis has the potential to undermine the fabric of Irish society, but it already has and continues to do so on a daily basis. We have over 15,000 homeless people, 4,000 of whom are children. The 2030 target to eliminate homelessness has been binned by the Minister. We have 120,000 families on council housing waiting lists. We have skyrocketing, exorbitant rents and up to 500,000 adults living in their childhood bedrooms. We have a huge cohort of families locked out of home ownership. They are over the limit for council housing but do not have enough income to get a mortgage. They are condemned to poverty, paying skyrocketing rents for evermore. We also have the emigration of our brightest and best to the US, Australia and Canada.

The Housing Commission report means that we need a declaration in law of a housing emergency. We need a housing emergency measures in the public interest Act modelled on the Financial Emergency Measures in the Public Interest Act. What would such an Act do? It would address housing through emergency action, as recommended by the Housing Commission. It would housing-proof all Government actions. It would establish a national infrastructure investment fund or Government bond to help fund housing. It would stop all evictions, require house sales to tenants in situ, freeze and reduce rents, and empower councils to purchase, by agreement or compulsorily, and repair vacant houses for letting to families on waiting lists. It would allow for the commencement of a massive social and affordable housing construction programme. Nothing short of this will solve the housing emergency.

Deputy Brian Stanley

The housing targets were missed last year by a country mile. The leaders of the Government promised before the election that up to 40,000 units would be delivered, but when we got through the election, we discovered that we just about built 30,000. The signs this year for social housing in particular, and indeed for housing delivery overall, are not very promising. Two areas that are really being left behind are cost rental and affordable-to-buy housing. The affordable housing scheme, as currently designed, is not working and it will not work in most parts of the country. The Minister does not have to take my word for it. If he speaks to local authority managers and housing officials around the country, they will tell him it is not working. Workers and families who are just above the limit for social housing but who do not have a hope of getting a mortgage or a loan for a house are losing out. They are stuck in private rented accommodation, paying skyrocketing rents with no security of tenure for themselves or their families. They are locked in and those who are over 40 or 45 have no hope whatsoever. We need to start providing affordable and social housing for them, including in small towns like Mountrath, as well as in larger towns like Mountmellick, Portarlington, Portlaoise, Graiguecullen, Rathdowney, Abbeyleix and similar towns. We need affordable housing to buy and rent in those towns. We need cost rentals for workers and families.

I know that we cannot pull rabbits out of hats but I would make two points to the Minister. The Housing Commission report tells us, at #61. c. that there is an urgency around "enforcing vacant building and vacant site taxation". If one looks closely at the report, one sees that the residential zoned land tax, at 3%, is not enough. I do not want that tax levied on active farmland but it needs to be levied on land that is not active farmland and it needs to be stepped up a gear if we want it to work. Only 16 local authorities have actually levied the vacant sites levy, on 186 sites in total in the country. There is a whole string of local authorities that have not even designated one site as subject to the vacant site levy. That is really unusual. We have to free up the land and reduce the costs. These are two things that can be done and the Housing Commission report tells us that they need to be done.

To conclude, we need to mass-produce housing. I have raised this previously with various Ministers. We need six to ten house designs for different needs, for disabled people, single people, families with children, both larger and smaller houses. We need possibly up to ten designs and then we need to use those designs. That will cut out the architectural costs, which are adding 10% to 14% to the cost of building and slowing the process down. Papers go back and forward between Departments. We need to cut this out and use the same designs and plans.

Deputy Charles Ward

I wish the Minister nothing but the best in the years to come because what is ahead is the biggest crisis this country has ever seen when it comes to housing. When reading the Housing Commission report, I was shocked to find no mention of the defective concrete block crisis. The thousands of houses that have been impacted by this crisis are not mentioned once in the 250-page report. It is an absolute disgrace. Whether an oversight or an intentional omission, it is equally concerning. The Housing Commission claims to have studied the challenges of the housing system in detail but this could not be further from the truth. The commission chose to omit thousands of houses in this country that have been affected by defective concrete blocks. The crisis has been continuously ignored by the Government and State bodies but there is no way we will be able to tackle the housing crisis in Ireland without tackling the defective block crisis. There are more than 20,000 homes throughout the country currently affected. There are two crises in the one hand and one impacts the other. The only mention of this comes on page 183, when the Commission states the following:

While adherence to building regulations has improved since the introduction of the Building Control (Amendment) Regulation 2014, the opt-out facility for single dwellings, as introduced by S.I. No. 365 of 2015, has been described as a ‘retrograde step’ and could lead to repeat building failures.

The report refers to the expert panel on concrete blocks yet fails to explain the context of the reference or mention the defective block crisis at all.

This is an insult to people who are affected by defective concrete blocks. For almost ten years, impacted homeowner groups have been calling for the removal of this opt-out facility. I know for a fact that defective blocks have been used in houses in Donegal since the publication of the report in 2017. This is despite the recommendations in the report and the constant ignoring of impacted homeowners' practical solutions to end this. We in the 100% Redress Party have made ourselves available to work with the Government and offer solutions that will work. The Government needs to take proactive steps to address the ongoing crisis and prevent it from ever happening again. We must establish an independent market surveillance mechanism that will protect homeowners and the construction industry. This is something that has not been addressed. The Housing Commission's report should have been an opportunity to address this country's building failures and its weak building regulations. Instead, we had a Dublin-focused housing report that attempted to sweep the defective concrete crisis under the carpet and ignored thousands of impacted homeowners in Donegal, the west and all other counties throughout the country that are affected. We need help and we need it now.

Deputy Peter 'Chap' Cleere

Last year, the Department of Finance published figures that highlighted that an annual output of 50,000 new homes would require funding of €20.4 billion a year, with the majority of this money coming from private development, including public funding. We know that record public funding has been put in for 2025. In order to get our housing market working, there are two key elements that international institutions look at before they commit finance to home construction finance. These are the return of their capital and policy stability. We have had a lot of debate about new interventions in recent weeks but what developers and international funds need are policy certainty and stability in the medium term.

From my perspective as newly elected TD, I am very aware that housing is a major social and economic challenge that touches every generation. In 1983, my parents were offered a council house by Kilkenny County Council. They moved into a two-bedroom house with three kids at the time. The family managed to purchase the house and it is still the family home to this day. They were given an opportunity by the State to better themselves. My siblings and I were given an opportunity to have the security of a home, which means so much to so many people.

Housing supply has increased significantly over the past decade but much more needs to be achieved. I want to focus in particular on the issues we have throughout the country with wastewater treatment and the small towns and villages growth programme. I will focus on Kilkenny where, at present, 14 schemes have been identified under the small towns and villages growth programme. These are Bennettsbridge, Paulstown, Piltown, Fiddown, Inistioge, Mullinavat, Kells, Kilmanagh, Glenmore, Ballyhale, Windgap, Dungarvan and Freshford. All of these schemes have been highlighted and prioritised by the local council for funding through the small towns and villages growth programme. However, having received feedback from Irish Water, the earliest that the first scheme the council has as a priority can be done, which is Bennettsbridge, is 2029. My understanding is that all of the other schemes must wait until that one is done. This is based on correspondence I have received. This is simply not good enough or acceptable. These towns and villages and their GAA clubs, shops, post offices and schools all depend on a housing market and people coming in, setting up and putting down roots in their communities. It is not there, but it needs to be. I have not even spoken about water services, an issue that is hamstringing other places.

In Kilkenny, there are now only six towns and villages with the capacity to grow in terms of social affordable housing. Every other one is at capacity, between water and wastewater. As places such as Thomastown have capacity, large amounts of development are happening there, while places such as Inistioge and Graiguenamanagh have no capacity. They are dwarfing while Thomastown is exploding. It does not have capacity in the schools while there is capacity in other areas. This is something about which I feel very strongly.

Another point I want to make is on legislation. The national planning framework will be discussed in the Dáil shortly. We were able to put in place emergency legislation for the Ukrainian crisis. Accommodation was made available and put back into use throughout the country to cater for the Ukrainian crisis. I am asking that we do something similar for our housing crisis because we are in an emergency situation. Whatever needs to be done can be debated in the Houses but we have to get serious and get real about housing. If we do not do so, we will go nowhere. We have to support our families, we have to support rural towns and villages, and we have to do it now. We cannot wait. I ask that we have a look at putting in place emergency legislation to speed up development, get these houses built and support families and communities. We can worry about the specifics and upgrading once the houses are built. It is very important that this be put in place.

With regard to some of the schemes, I have to say the croí cónaithe scheme has become very important for rural Ireland to help people get access to properties. There is a significant grant of between €50,000 and €70,000 but, on the other side, we have a situation where owners of a derelict or vacant property, which might have been there for 15 or 20 years, are inflating the price significantly. This needs to be addressed. I welcome the croí cónaithe scheme but we need to keep an eye on this.

With regard to first-time buyers, it is important that we have a balanced conversation on housing. Over the past five years, 119,000 first-time buyer mortgages were drawn down. In 2024 alone, mortgage drawdowns for first-time buyers reached more than 26,000, with a value of more than €7.8 billion. It is the highest annual level since 2007. Progress is being made but it is just not being made quickly enough. We need to get a little bit more urgency and intensity to deliver housing throughout the country and, in particular, in my constituency of Carlow-Kilkenny.

Some of the schemes we have are proving very popular. A total of 4,000 affordable schemes were delivered in 2023. Delivery of affordable housing has more than doubled, with an increase of 128% in 2022 activity. The help to buy scheme was extended and there have been more than 51,000 approvals for the scheme. It is an incredibly successful scheme. The Opposition, including Sinn Féin, have opposed it time and again but 51,000 families in the country have benefited from the scheme to date and this must be welcomed. It needs to be continued. I know it is a measure in the programme for Government that will be continued.

With regard to our construction sector's capacity, more than 175,000 people now work in construction. There was a record number of 9,000 apprentice registrations in the construction sector in 2024. We need to continue to promote and encourage people to go down the route of apprenticeships. In Kilkenny in my constituency, and the Leas-Cheann Comhairle will be aware of it, we have a greenfield site of 15 acres where there will be a brand new institute of further education and training. It will cater for 5,000 students and will include apprenticeships, be they in carpentry, bricklaying or whatever the case may be.

We need more homes and we need to get urgent about it. We need to get a little bit tougher and more rigorous with Irish Water and its delivery. We need to challenge it more. Funding has been made available and that is great, but we need accountability in the delivery of these projects. I have mentioned 14 wastewater treatment plants in Kilkenny that need upgrading or need a decision. I have to go back to those towns and villages to tell them where they are at. I cannot go back to Inistioge, for example, and tell the people everything is great but we cannot build a house there for another five or six years so the schools will decline, the GAA club will be low in numbers, the post office will be threatened and the shop will struggle. We cannot have a situation like this and it needs to be highlighted.

Increasing supply is the key to addressing the housing crisis. The Government is acutely aware of this and it needs to pursue every action possible to support people out of homelessness and give children the best start in life. I was fortunate enough to get that start. Every child in the country deserves the same opportunity that I had. We need to build record levels of social homes. We will have the launch of the new starter home programme. We need to support people to get keys, get into their homes, give them security of tenure and make sure our towns and villages in rural Carlow and Kilkenny can thrive in future. We need to make it happen.

Deputy Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire

We hear time and again from the Government that housing is the most important social, political and strategic issue.

We heard it thrown back at us again today about a monopoly on compassion, which is one of those talking points we hear all the time. That is not contested. We appreciate that there are people on every side of this House that have compassion but the sobering, depressing, frustrating reality is that the housing crisis is getting worse. What is worse than even that is the Government is locked into and committed to policies that will continue to make it worse. I dread to think what the price of housing will be after another four or five years of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael in government.

The reality is that house prices are reaching record levels, rents are reaching record levels and more people, including children, are homeless in this State than we could ever have imagined possible ten or 12 years ago. Children are still doing their homework on the edge of a bed in overcrowded emergency accommodation. The scandal continues, and it escalates, and the Government's policies are adding to it.

We talk a lot about the need for affordable housing schemes and so on. In the last such scheme that was launched in Cork city, the minimum price that somebody paid was €320,000. The maximum was €389,000 or €390,000. How could that seen as affordable for anyone?

Some of the people who come to our clinics - I am sure they come to the Minister's clinics, too - have limited options available to them. I spoke to a woman recently. She is in her early thirties, and she is working hard and full-time. She has annual income of approximately €28,000 or €29,000. She has worked hard to save about €20,000. What could she get? She has been offered a mortgage of €100,000 or something like that. What she could possibly get for that in Cork city, Cork county or anywhere would hardly be bigger than a garden shed. It is just not possible. She qualifies for social housing, but as a person on her own, she could be waiting ten years. All that time, she should be out on her own and living independently. She is working hard and has done everything right, like so many people of her generation. They have done everything that has been asked of them. They go out and get their qualifications, whether it is third level or apprenticeships. They go out and work hard. They work full-time, they try everything they can and they are patient, waiting and trying to hope things will come around. For many of them, though, there is little prospect of that. There is little prospect of their being able to have a permanent home.

The reality is, for all the Government talks about its commitment to this, there needs to be a change in course. What we are seeing is actually the opposite - a doubling down on policies that are failing. There is a need for a significant change of course. The Government cannot keep doing the same thing while expecting better results.

Deputy Michael Collins

We are years talking in the Dáil about housing. I listened to the Fianna Fáil Deputy who spoke previously and I have to agree with him. Regarding Ukrainians and others, we have been promising that all sorts of construction can be done and all sorts of structures can be built but we cannot do anything for our own selves. That is something we need to do very soon. I hope the Minister will look at housing in a different light to his predecessors because they made no movement on housing. It is worse things have got, and it looks like the Government is going to be 13,000 short of its target by 2027, from what I can read in the newspapers today. It does not need to be.

The first thing - I raised this with the Taoiseach today - is rural planning and rural planning guidelines. They are 100% against the person who is applying for the planning - the mother, the father, the young person or couple who are trying to get off the ground. They need the Minister's help, and I hope he is listening to me because this is hugely important to these people. They come into my clinics - maybe seven, eight, nine or ten of them - every week looking for planning. They are being refused planning. I often say to them that it is like the train is gone from the station when they come to me, so they should please come to me before they go on the train. We might then be able to do something for them if they get refused.

It is simplistic, silly stuff they are getting refused on. I do not actually blame the planners for this. I blame the rural planning guidelines, which are built to make sure that young people will not get fair and honest planning on their own lands and farms. That is unjustified and cannot continue.

I could spend ages talking about Dunmanway, Shannonvale, Ballydehob and Goleen as regards wastewater treatment plants, but I am not going to now because we might have a speech later on about housing. However, we need to concentrate on situations where Uisce Éireann has not delivered on wastewater treatment plants. The Minister needs to appear before the Dáil. For five weeks, I have been looking at the Business Committee for the Minister to appear before the Dáil to speak on wastewater treatment plants, but it has not happened as of yet.

Deputy Ken O'Flynn

I congratulate the Minister on his position and wish him the best of luck. I genuinely mean that.

Today, we had the Taoiseach on his feet telling us that the Government's biggest commitment was to housing, and that the biggest commitment of his party and the other parties that are in government, including the Independents, was to housing, yet where are they? It is an empty Chamber. Where is the Government that is meant to be listening to us?

We are looking at a 10% increase in homelessness in the past year, with 15,000 people in emergency accommodation, and 4,500 of those are children. This is not a housing crisis, but a housing emergency, and it is about time that this Government recognised that and declared it. We are looking at increases in property prices at 8.1% at the moment. Independent Ireland's TDs and councillors have people coming to our constituency offices and asking us not to get them on the housing list or make a representation to the council, but to get them auctioneers who will listen to them so they can rent a house privately. They have €2,500 to spend and they cannot find accommodation. That is a housing emergency.

We talk about supply and demand. If this Government and its predecessor had listened to Michael O'Flynn - one of the biggest property developers in the country - when he said five years ago that we should start rezoning land and lower the price of the site to 10%, as it was in the eighties when my mother and father, at the age of 18 and 21, could go off and purchase a house because the site price was 10%. Now we are looking at an average of 40% to 50% for the site price alone.

We are zoning lands. Instead of rezoning, we have the tail wagging the dog with Irish Water telling us where we can and cannot built, where we can put planning permission and what we can zone. We have too many infrastructure people and too many people in utility supplies, NTA and the rest of it, dictating to local authorities where they can build properties. The Minister knows as well as I do that Irish Water and other utility companies are not a bit interested in facilitating housing or facilitating the State, including local authorities.

I congratulate Cork County Council, which has led the way when it comes to affordable housing and has delivered far more affordable housing under the stewardship of Ms Valerie O'Sullivan, the CE, and Mr. Brian Geaney, the deputy CE, who have done tremendous work. As has been mentioned by a previous speaker, though, it costs €350,000 to almost €400,000 for an affordable house. That is what we are delivering. Is the Minister listening? That is not affordable for anybody. There is no such thing as an affordable house in this country.

Deputy Peadar Tóibín

That we are having statements on housing is another example of the fact that we are not functioning properly as a Legislature. The very fact we are having statements instead of pushing through legislation is basically a Dáil trying to look busy instead of doing the work it is meant to do. It is a disgrace that, week after week, we have statements on this, that and the other. It is showing the Government up for its inability to let this Parliament function.

I wish to raise the issue of the number of houses that are derelict around the country. There are 160,000 derelict houses. That is an incredible number of homes that are empty in the middle of a housing crisis. Having empty homes in the middle of a housing crisis is akin to exporting food in the middle of a famine. It is a disgrace. It is low-hanging fruit in terms of getting people back into their homes. It usually involves the lowest amount of money to make a building habitable. It is also best for the environment because it has less of an environmental impact, as there is less concrete, blocks, transport and so on used. Many towns and villages in this country are festooned with derelict buildings. If one travels through most provincial towns, even on the main street, one will see that approximately 20% to 25% of those buildings are derelict. Getting those homes back into use enlivens and gets families back into the towns and creates an energy there that is so badly needed.

In September 2022, the Government created a grant for homes that were empty, namely, the vacant homes grant. At the time, the Government made it so difficult to apply that one practically had to be homeless and have a derelict home to get it.

Last year, we found out that there were 11,000 applications for that particular grant. Only 1,449 have actually resulted in a payout of that grant. Some 13% of the applicants of that grant have received it in the full of last year, which is an incredibly low figure. If the Government proceeds at this pace, it will take it 160 years to achieve getting those homes back into use.

Deputy Paul Nicholas Gogarty

We have come to this housing debate God knows how many times now. I think we have had about six or seven debates on housing. In one sense, it recognises the importance of the issue. However, as Deputy Tóibín said, we are having a lot of statements. We are going around in circles without actually moving forward. The Housing Commission's report, for example, has been going for some time at this stage. It is supposed to be this comprehensive roadmap, but so far very little has been done regarding it.

In one of my earlier contributions, I mentioned some things outside the report that need to be done, but I want to focus on a couple of things inside the report that have not been looked at so far. For example, we have not had proper rent regulation reform or vacant property utilisation. We are talking about what needs to be done regarding urban development, especially in Dublin, but again, there is no concrete plan and no concrete large-scale funding allocated. We still do not have full transparency in terms of land pricing and house prices. We have the housing report in terms of sale prices, but there is no full transparency as to why prices are increasing and by what percentage every year. That needs to be focused on.

I want to refer to something that will come up later, namely the tenants in situ scheme. It needs to be raised in this debate as well. It is not fit for purpose, and I hope to contribute on that later on this evening.

Deputy Peter Roche

I am not going to take from the Minister's woes. There has been a lot of debate with regard to housing and the need for it within our country. Obviously, as some contributors have already indicated, housing supply and wastewater infrastructure go hand in hand. It has to be said that the lack of investment in wastewater treatment infrastructure is one of the greatest roadblocks in many ways in the supply of housing, particularly across the rural parts of the country.

I will be parochial because I represent Galway East and County Galway when it comes to the provision of housing. Without proper wastewater facilities, new developments are delayed or unviable. Planning permission is also another major issue. Many rural areas cannot approve new housing projects because of wastewater infrastructure, in that it is inadequate or at full capacity. In my own county, there are villages such as Craughwell, Ardrahan, Abbeyknockmoy, Corofin, Barnaderg, Monivea and many more that are stagnant, for want of a better word. They are stuck in time because they cannot develop any further due to the lack of wastewater infrastructure. It is a crying shame when communities that are ripe and are regarded as settlement centres do not have the capacity to invite new people to come in and develop their first home within that settlement area because of the lack of wastewater provision. That does not feel right.

One of the things we have all advocated for, and continue to advocate for, is for rural communities and investment in rural villages, particularly when it comes to wastewater. Heretofore, most of the emphasis has been on the greater urban settings with regard to that kind of investment. It is fair to say that the rural communities are mostly where the rural occupant or rural dweller wants to put his or her first home, particularly the sons and daughters of rural dwellers. There is a win-win there for everyone, because if young couples have an opportunity to build their first home in the local village, they will utilise the local shop, the local post office and local GP. They will be supplying a network of talent to the local GAA and soccer teams, and all of the positive things that go with investing in rural villages. That is something I feel really passionate about. I did not refer to rural schools. There are many rural schools, one of which I visited last weekend, that are crying out for one or two students to save a teacher for next year. That is why I am passionate that we must change the guidelines or the rules pertaining to planning and Irish Water's capacity or ability to be able to deliver wastewater treatment systems.

I know there is a lot of criticism with regard to the sewage or package treatment plants that now seem to be a thing of the past, but they are functioning in many rural villages. If we cannot develop rural wastewater sewage treatment systems in 2025, what are we at? We did that rather efficiently over the last decade or two and they are still functioning in our villages. That also begs the question as to whether we can invest further in those that are malfunctioning as some of them are.

The worrying thing is that the Environmental Protection Agency has repeatedly highlighted the wastewater treatment in many towns and villages because of its failure to meet EU environmental standards. That is affecting the growth in our housing stock. It is also affecting public health, which is something that we should all be very concerned about. What is more worrying than anything is that Irish Water has consistently said that it will take two decades before it can bring the standards with regard to wastewater treatment systems up to where it is practical or usable. That does not sit well with me because I will be long gone by the time that we will have reached that point.

It behoves us, as a Government, and the Department to look at the massive cry for the need for additional housing across the country. We also need to find a mechanism to invest in Irish Water in order for it to invest in the villages and rural towns I am talking about. In the absence of that investment, clearly, the deficits to which I have referred will continue. I have the greatest respect and, in equal measure, sympathy for the Minister because of the task at hand, but at the end of the day, if we are serious about the job at hand and the investment that needs to be made, wastewater treatment systems are a must to unlock the delivery and development of sustainable housing across the country.

Deputy Maurice Quinlivan

First, I thank the Minister for the opportunity to speak on this debate which is long overdue. Sinn Féin has been looking for this debate for a long time and we are finally here.

It is only a few short weeks into the term of this Government and already it appears that the Government's housing plan has failed. We have a continuation of the previous Government of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and their catastrophic handling of the housing crisis. Under these two parties, we saw a record levels of homelessness, with in excess of 15,000 people now in State-provided emergency accommodation. Of these, 586 adults and 204 children, or dependants, availed of services in the mid-west, with 489 of those adults availing of emergency accommodation in my own city of Limerick. Of course, the figure of 15,000 people I mentioned is not the full scale of homelessness across the State; it excludes those couch surfing, those sleeping rough and many others.

The failures of the Government on housing are evident in every constituency in this State. TDs such as myself were inundated with calls from people desperate for accommodation. In my own constituency office, we receive dozens of calls every single day. These calls are from people who cannot afford to rent. How could they when rents in Limerick increased by 19% in 2024 alone? There are people who want to get on the property ladder but cannot with the price of a standard three-bed semi-detached house in Limerick at an average of €380,000. There are people looking for social and affordable housing but the glacial pace of delivery means demand far exceeds supply.

An affordable housing scheme was advertised in Newcastle West, County Limerick. The minimum price for what is called an affordable four-bed semi-detached home is up to €435,000, with a minimum income of €81,301 required. It is an insult to hard-working families that someone would dare to call this affordable. I wonder what planet the person who came up with that price for a house in Limerick was on.

The Housing Commission has been damning in its assessment of the Government housing plans. It described the housing policy as ineffective decision-making and reactive only. It notes that under Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil, we have one of the highest levels of public expenditure on housing yet one of the poorest outcomes. It is another case of the Government's mismanagement of public funds. It said targets were too low and advised that there is a need for increased delivery of public and private housing, which should be front-loaded.

These are expressions of the Housing Commission, an independent commission established by the previous Government. With this type of criticism and the record of the Government parties in missing targets, why would anyone have confidence in them to resolve the crisis this time? In the lead-up to the general election, as has been said, the Government told the electorate that it would deliver 40,000 homes in 2024. We know this was simply not true and that it delivered 30,000 houses, which is fewer than in 2023. We now know the Department of Finance's housing unit was aware that housing completions were likely to be similar or below the 2023 output. The electorate was deliberately deceived. The commission has outlined what needs to be done. The old maxim is to never reinforce failure, yet this is what the Government seems hell-bent on doing.

Deputy Barry Heneghan

It is good to finally be able to speak. What I was trying to say earlier is that I was described as an underling, which is someone who is under someone else's order. I would love for that to be withdrawn from the record of the House. As an Independent TD, I support this Government with cautious optimism, in the hope that it will be able to listen to me. The only people whose orders I am under are the people of Dublin Bay North, who put their trust in me, a 26-year-old Independent. How many marriages and childhoods have been shaped by the relentless stress and uncertainty of not knowing if they will have a home? We need a Covid-level response that is bold, urgent and effective, with no more election cycle thinking. We need a ten to 15-year strategy. I am delighted that the derelict sites register is being implemented by Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council, increasing to 237 in 2024 from a previous small number. It is great to see the councils are doing that but we need to give more funding to Fingal County Council and Dublin City Council. I know the housing staff in Dublin City Council personally. They are tireless workers but they are understaffed and underfunded, and we need to give them that chance.

Deputy Carol Nolan

Last year, the Parliamentary Budget Office published data on the number of households eligible for but not yet in receipt of social housing in my constituency of Offaly. The Parliamentary Budget Office analysis was based on what it would have cost to house the number of households on the social housing waiting lists, plus the households in receipt of the housing assistance payment. The cost for County Offaly and for the county council list was put at €338 million overall. That figure really sums up all of this. It sums up the acute emergency that we have because the cost is staggering.

We have an immigration crisis that is overwhelming our accommodation capacity. I have tabled a number of parliamentary questions to the Minister's Department in the past week on this very issue. Unfortunately, the responses I have received so far are less than encouraging. If we cannot meet supply, we must cut demand. That means effectively closing our borders and our services to tens of thousands who are here and who are expected to arrive here without any legal right to be here, but who still claim accommodation. I wonder where Sinn Féin lies on that issue. They have been mouthing here all day and calling us all sorts of names. I will tell you one thing. Sinn Féin tried pushing me around before when I was in their damn party and they will not get away with it. I will make it very clear.

Deputy Mattie McGrath

I wish the Minister and Minister of State well. It is a mammoth task. We have to get real. The idea of the left here is that we cannot have private contractors or developers. If we do not have private developers involved, we will not build the houses, full stop. I would love to be back in the 1940s and 1950s when the county council had manpower and built the houses, but those days are gone. We have to get over these ideologies, stop objecting to housing being built and encourage the voluntary sector. I am a member of Caislean Nua Voluntary Housing Association. It is the proudest thing I was ever involved in. We built 17 houses. That is not many but it was a voluntary committee. If every village and hamlet built ten, we would halve the housing crisis. Then we could deal with immigration. At least Deputy O'Gorman is gone from his post as Minister. He sent out a tweet in 13 different languages to invite all and sundry into Ireland. We are great. We cannot house our own. We can spend €426,000 per unit for modular homes for Ukrainians in Clonmel. It is a shocking indictment on the previous Government. Hopefully this Government will change that. They are not worth €100,000. Someone is making a lot of money behind the scenes and it smells very much like corruption.

Deputy Danny Healy-Rae

It is a scandal to God above in heaven that there are people who want and could build a house for themselves in County Kerry cannot because of this planning clause about urban development pressure. This means that young people who want to build next door to their parents on their own land are not allowed to do it. I want the Minister to look at that. It is a sad state of affairs that in many of our towns and villages, we do not have a treatment plant so that people can build and tap into the sewers. In many towns and villages, we do not have enough water. If we are to help people and say we will do something about affordable homes, I ask the Minister to please do as the UK is doing, where people can claim back the VAT. A third of the cost of every house that is built is VAT, levies and other taxes. That is the honest truth about it, if we are meaning to do something. There are vacant homes in Kerry, Cork and everywhere. Right around me are vacant houses. People will not rent when they have to pay back 50% of what they get from the rent. When they want their house back, they know they cannot get it back. I ask the Minister to do something about it because then we may be in a better position.

Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage (Deputy James Browne)

I thank the House for the debate on the report of the Housing Commission and the views put forward throughout it. I once again express my appreciation to the commission members for their time, effort and commitment. It is clear from the views expressed during the debate that there is much we agree upon about where we must get to. That said, it is unsurprising that we are not all agreed, given the deep-rooted nature of the challenges that we have and the breadth and complexity of measures proposed by the commission to deal with them. Many Deputies have contributed over the two days of the debate. Regrettably, I cannot respond to every point raised in the short time available to me this afternoon, so I will confine my remarks to some of the more substantive points touched on by Deputies before bringing the debate to an end.

The commission's observation that Ireland has poor outcomes among European peers, given our level of expenditure on housing, has been raised on multiple occasions since the report was published and again during the debate. It is easy for the point to be misconstrued, and the commission has indeed clarified it on a number of occasions since. Its core criticism is about the failure to retain and recycle the funding invested in the social housing system. While this money is not wasted, as it is invested in other local authority services, the proposals of the commission around greater ring-fencing of public housing money could improve the sustainability of the system. The viability and possible impacts of these proposals are being actively scoped by my Department.

The supply needed to meet emerging and unmet demand has received considerable attention since the commission's report. This was referred to during the debate. Understanding of the scale of the challenge ahead is critical to dealing with the challenge. To this end, the Government welcomes the work of the commission in this area, which estimates unmet demand to be at up to 256,000 homes. However, it is important to understand that it is inherently difficult to estimate a quantity, given the range of underpinning assumptions required. The residential development and construction industries were almost annihilated in the wake of 2008. Recovering the sector remains a work in progress and there is clearly a need to significantly scale up capacity across the construction industry in the coming years.

Against this backdrop, the Government's revised target of 300,000 new homes by 2030 is both ambitious and credible. The crucial issue is ultimately that delivery meets demand. On that principle, we will adopt the same agile approach we have taken with Housing for All and revisit the targets in 2027 if, reflecting the demand and growing industry capacity, we need different targets from 2028.

The commission also recommends increasing the proportion of social and cost rental stock to 20% of the total national housing stock. I understand there were some reservations about recommending an exact proportion. I agree fully with the commission that the proportion of social and cost-rental housing needs to increase relative to the overall stock. In this regard, I believe the proportion of social and cost-rental housing needed is ultimately one that allows the demand for such housing to be fully met at any given time, whether that is 18%, 20% or 22%. We are still some way from achieving this goal but we are continuing year-on-year to expand our stock of public housing.

Housing for All set ambitious targets in this regard, with approximately one third of targeted delivery being social and cost-rental housing. The revised local authority and tenure-specific targets are still to be finalised but we would expect the proportion of targeted social and cost rental to be similar when they are agreed. Over time, achieving such levels of delivery will drive up the stock of social and cost rental to the levels proposed by the Housing Commission.

The role of private finance in funding the development of new homes and the link with the ongoing review of the operation of rent pressure zones were also raised during the debate. Delivering 50,000 homes on average per year up to 2030 will require an estimated €20 billion in development finance each year. It is an unassailable fact that a large proportion of this must come from international sources. Without attracting the supply of appropriate private finance to complement the State’s unprecedented level of investment in housing, we risk exacerbating supply and affordability challenges, particularly in the private rental sector. I understand that the public debate, much of which has been mischaracterised, may have worried many, particularly renters. I am committed to implementing a regulatory model that secures a fair balance between the interests of tenants and landlords. I firmly believe we can protect renters and attract sustainable long-term investment and finance to finance new homes for rent at the same time. The two aims are not mutually exclusive.

I understand the frustration expressed by several Deputies with the planning system and the timelines for delivering housing-related infrastructure. We have embarked on a significant programme of reform in this area in recent years. A cornerstone of these reforms, the Planning and Development Act 2024, will be commenced on a phased basis as soon as practicable. I also expect the revisions to the national planning framework to be agreed shortly by the Government and thereafter by both Houses of the Oireachtas. I would also like to re-emphasise that the proposed new strategic housing activation office will bring a critical focus to the provision of enabling infrastructure for public and private housing development while addressing unnecessary infrastructure delays and blockages. Its focus draws heavily on the commission’s recommendation for a housing delivery oversight executive. While its function may not be exactly the same as the commission envisaged on day one, the approach being taken allows us to get the office up and running quickly and begin working towards the underlying objective.

Homelessness remains a key challenge for the Government and addressing homelessness underpins many of our efforts and ambitions. Striving to achieve our housing targets through all possible avenues, increasing the supply of social and cost-rental housing and addressing supply shortages in the private rental sector are all ultimately concerned with reducing and eliminating the risk of homelessness. The programme for Government reaffirms our commitment to the Lisbon declaration on working towards ending homelessness by 2030. We have set out a range of specific commitments to support this objective. We are closely aligned with the Housing Commission in recognising homelessness as a top priority and in our approach to addressing this challenge.

I once again thank all Deputies who contributed to the debate. I will consider all that has been said as I prepare, first, for the engagement with the Minister, Deputy Jack Chambers, over the coming months as part of the review of the national development plan and, second, for the development of the Government's new housing plan, which will follow. As I have said, I am focused on addressing the immediate challenge of boosting housing supply through all the means at our disposal while also supporting the policies and structures needed to enable the supply of homes that the country needs in the long term. The programme for Government contains dozens of commitments that draw directly from or are influenced by the commission's work. I expect there will be further opportunities to consider other ideas for implementation, most notably the Government’s new whole-of-government housing plan.