Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Chair and the Minister. This has been an unprecedented 12 to 15 months we have lived through. To say we have given out €13 billion in PUP and wage supports is a statement in itself. The only good thing about that is that money is going to people rather than to corporations or whatever. It is, and will be, in the economy because people will have money and they are paying their bills to keep going.

Looking at where we are and where we are going, there are a few questions. We talk about investment and about housing and technology being two places where investment is very much needed. I had a discussion this morning locally in a Zoom meeting about housing, the dysfunctional nature of it and what solutions we can put in place to make housing one of the triggers to economic recovery, as well as providing much-needed homes. There is a lot of talk about affordable housing, social housing and whatever else. The important thing is that the private housing market is not working at the moment. I believe the cost of building a house has gone up substantially in the past number of years due to the fact we want to build a better standard of house. We are looking at having a house that is more passive and uses less energy. Long term, we will get the benefit from that, but the initial capital cost for developers or anybody building a house is added to considerably.

As well as that, a large volume of housing is not occupied in towns and villages and for which we are not taking any regard, in terms of the help to buy scheme or the Rebuilding Ireland home loan scheme. For instance, with the help to buy scheme, if it is a second-hand house, the buyer will not qualify for support. For first-time house buyers, it is imperative we get young families back into towns and villages and give them the same chance as if they were buying a new house. A large number of houses lie vacant in our towns and villages and it would not cost the same as building a new house. We seem to be dead against the idea of supporting that in a real, tangible way.

The Rebuilding Ireland home loan scheme will only support the purchase of a house. It will not support the refurbishment the buyer will have to carry out on a house. For example, someone could buy a house in a village for €70,000 or €80,000 and put in another €70,000 or €80,000 to have a modern living space in a town or village for a family, as opposed to spending €200,000 or €300,000 on a new house, including buying a site, building a house, etc. There seems to be a lack of commitment to that.

The Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland lately, in a presentation on the cost of building apartments in Dublin, stated that more than 70% of the space in Dublin over ground floor retail is vacant.

That is a great deal of space that could be used for people to live in, and one might ask why we are not taking it up rather than being driven mainly to support only people who are buying or building new houses. If we are to get the economy to grow and grow, while at the same time increasing the potential for people to work in a blended way in the regions, towns or villages, that is important. In the previous Government, it was a battle at times but we got the national broadband plan in place, which has proven to have been a very solid decision at the time. If there is any way in which we can accelerate the programme, we should do it. It is only in the past year that people have realised how much they are missing out on broadband.