Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy mentioned a few of the initiatives. We are seeing the URDF take hold throughout the country. We would like to see more of the fund used and we will do a review of it. We are seeing improvements in our cities and towns throughout the country. We will have another call on the fund too.

The overall capital in this sphere of the Department will deliver a step change in housing delivery in particular. We need the State to lead by example. We see homes being built. Every Deputy visits new housing estates and sees the quality of the homes that are being built. We need more of them. We need to accelerate that delivery and we need more affordable housing delivery. The strength of having a multi-annual plan is that we are able to set down targets, which I would like to exceed, for different types of housing, whether social, affordable or private. We are playing catch-up in some areas. In other areas, the water capital programme is accelerating with Irish Water. The move towards a publicly-owned single utility is important too. I will use the opportunity to say that we have engaged substantially and extensively on this matter with unions and management in the local government sector. I am hopeful we will be able to conclude that work so that people are secure in their jobs and Irish Water has one delivery stream as a publicly-owned utility. We will then move towards the referendum on water, to which we gave a commitment, and the referendum on housing, which will also be important.

With all the different delivery streams, the issue is one of building capacity. We need to build more capacity within the local government sector, and we are doing that, but also within the construction sector, full stop. We have 20,000 more workers in construction than we had pre-pandemic. That is good but we need more. All of us understand that we must scale up our delivery. That can be done in two ways or by a combination of them. The first is by being more efficient and using more modern methods of construction and the second is by having the physical capacity for people to do the work. The capital investment gives that certainty and security that the State is the major player in the delivery of housing, both affordable and social.