Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I start by saying that there are nine sitting weeks left in the session, so not including this week, we will have nine meetings in this room. We can have additional virtual meetings but it is nevertheless a short period. I assume we will have at least one, if not two, pieces of Government legislation during those nine weeks for which we will have to provide time. These are the marine planning and development Bill and the legislation for the Land Development Agency. The Minister might tell us about that today.

Members should also consider that there will be Bills from the Opposition and pretty much all the parties here that will come before the committee at various stages. We will have to find some space for dealing with those. I have two lists, with the first an indication of the topics I would like to consider between now and Christmas, and the second an indication of topics to be flagged for consideration after Christmas.

I would like to bring in the Minister at some stage in October or November to review the programme for Government implementation. It is a general quarterly questioning of the Ministers and officials on matters.

I am quite concerned by a very significant increase in the number of recorded deaths of people in emergency accommodation or rough sleeping in Dublin, Cork and Galway. By midway this year, that rate had reached the same level it reached by the end of last year and the year before. It is a big issue. Some of the media commentary has been a little sensationalist but there would be value in the committee considering the matter and bringing in relevant people for debate. There has been some really good research and developments across the water in Britain that we could usefully look at. Perhaps a short report could be done by the secretariat to raise matters of concern to the Minister.

Most of our constituencies have seen the effects of Celtic tiger latent defects. The Minister is doing some good work in engaging with the Construction Defects Alliance and the Apartment Owners' Network. My understanding is the Minister will set up a working group to consider those matters from now until next June or July. It would be good for us to do a hearing and bring in the various players in order to discuss the matter. It is something we did before in committee. Given that there is a mica and pyrite scheme in Donegal and Mayo, with the extension of the pyrite scheme in Limerick and calls from people affected by pyrite in Clare, this exercise could be useful.

I had put a written proposal to the last housing committee to do an own-authored report on the relationship between land values and affordability. There have been seven separate Government-commissioned reports from 1972 to the present on all of this. The suggestion was made to us by an academic from Technological University Dublin, TU Dublin, not to do another report but to get people involved in the preparation of those other reports to appear before the committee to talk about the reports' recommendations and which ones are relevant for today. I am not suggesting that we conduct those hearings this year. I think we could do them in the first quarter of next year but I would like this committee to consider granting me permission to start work on this project. When one does a self-authored report, one has a lot of one's own research to do. The previous committee's secretariat and I had done a fair amount of preparation. I hope the committee is willing to allow me to proceed, bearing in mind that committee reports must get the approval of the full committee and that members get to amend them. It is simply that I would be the author which would make the distribution of work a little easier. It is something that we were meant to do from January to March of this year but with the election we obviously could not do so. I would like the committee to consider it. All of the other propositions are just things for us to consider early next year.