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

I am not going to go into the politics of this. Thankfully, we are seeing just short of 600 first-time buyers buying homes every week, so I will leave that where it is. The Deputy made the point, though, with regard to apartment development and the channelling of investment where we need it. We need investment to back the building and funding of housing estates and multi-unit developments. It is acutely so with regard to apartment delivery. That is why we have particularly used the LDA and AHBs through Project Tosaigh to advance the delivery of cost-rental homes, particularly on the apartments side. Griffin Point in the Deputy's constituency is an example. He will see 402 apartments under construction right now and nearing completion, and 50% of them are cost-rental and 50% are social. Cost-rental is not purchase, but 70 are tenures there.

We discussed the piece earlier around Croí Cónaithe cities and the next call. That is the assistance we are giving to allow people, and we can use the first home and help-to-buy schemes with that, to buy apartments that are being built for homeowners in our cities in particular. The first batch of them are being built right now, and approval for seven more is being assessed. We are going to put out an additional call over the summer. We need to have a scheme like that because it is incredibly difficult to fund apartment building right now for purchase. That is why the State has had to step in.

The other point I will make to the Deputy is about where we have a real issue. I had a housing meeting a couple of weeks ago in my constituency with more than 200 people at it. Many people want to see what options are there. They raised queries and issues, one of which was the view with regard to bulk purchasing whereby homes were being purchased because of, let us say, the two recent cases that were mentioned. Everyone knows we have changed the planning laws since 2021. I will be bringing a memo to Cabinet next week, which will provide an update on how many permissions on houses and duplexes have been protected by the ban on bulk purchasing because in the planning conditions now, they are up for single sale only. It is between 50,000 and 60,000.