Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Not at all. I spoke to the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, earlier about this. I made that exact point to him and he made the exact same point back to me. I have also said it to the Taoiseach, Deputy Leo Varadkar. When he appointed me, he said no idea is too radical. He told me to think of everything and not to dismiss anything because it does not sound like something Fine Gael might support. That is the approach I am taking. I see this as an emergency and a crisis. I have also signalled to the Attorney General that I want to sit down with him. I mentioned this earlier today. If we need to find new laws and new powers, we have to move quickly to do it. It is very important to me.

It is true that only 652 social housing units were built last year. It is true but we were starting from scratch in terms of what had been done previously. The target for this year is 2,400 and 2,000 are already on site in terms of construction, which is positive. A lot of good work has been done by the Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney. Deputy Coppinger said there were 211,000 households in insecure housing. I am not sure what service she was referring to. People are probably asking when we will get the housing market fixed but it is not just a market issue. We have had a dysfunctional market here in many ways since the mid-1990s. We have to find a way to fix the market but we also have to make a much bigger intervention in terms of what has been done to date by the local authorities and Government. The Deputy asked what the Taoiseach meant when he talked about investing more money in social housing. What the Taoiseach said was that if new money needed to be found, we will have to find it. Meetings have already been held by the Minister of Finance in the Department of Finance and my own Department on EUROSTAT and what can be done to fund projects off-balance sheet and through public private partnerships. That is important. Meetings have also been held by the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, with the European Investment Bank on new avenues for funding. We need to make sure that in finding solutions, money will not be the problem. That is what we need to make sure of. We will do everything we can to do that in investments that need to be made.

I will not comment on the site the Deputy mentioned because I do not have any evidence in front of me. Deputy Boyd Barrett has reported sites previously when he was worried about suspicious work practices. It can be reported on and inspected. The construction cost review was touched on by Deputy Coppinger. This work is being done at the moment. Two reviews are being done. One is an international benchmarking exercise which is important to see if we are outliers in any way when it comes to construction costs. The other review being done, which my Department is involved in, is on the cradle-to-grave construction costs. We will have the results of that review at the end of August. What does it actually cost at each point in the chain and what can be done to try to reduce some of those costs? That work will be completed at the end of August. I think I have answered all of the questions raised in the first round.