Mr. Fintan O'Brien:

I thank Deputy McGuinness. I agree that there is no doubt about the centrality of housing, both as a rural issue and a national issue, and that interdependence I talked about between rural and urban. They are part of the same argument and they cannot be separated. From our point of view, when we look at the themes that are emerging from the policy, be it balanced regional development, quality of life, employment or growth, all of those things interlink back to the housing issue. That has been the most common issue as we have gone around the country, and online and in talking to stakeholders. When talking to the OECD about the work it has been doing on a review of rural policy, it pointed to housing as a major infrastructural issue as well.

Deputy McGuinness notes that they are matters for the Department of housing but there is a whole-of-government approach, which is really important. As was noted, the Minister has met the Minister, Deputy Browne, and reiterated the importance of clear housing actions being a core part of what is in our policy. From our point of view, as I understand it, the Department of housing is also engaged in its process of developing a new national housing policy, and a lot of effort is going into aligning ourselves and making sure we are not at cross purposes. One of the things we are doing at the moment is engaging in a series of bilateral discussions. We have pretty much met all relevant Departments at this stage. We have gone through with them where we are at the moment and what the emerging issues are. Clearly, in the discussion with the Department of housing, the feedback from us has been that the housing issue has come up again and again in our consultation.

I mentioned in my opening statement that the Minister would be launching a public consultation document. That is now with Departments for their views. We want to get that out as soon as possible. Once that is out there, we will be back working bilaterally with Departments, including housing, and making sure we reflect in the narrative how important issues like housing are and also that the series of actions I discussed are clear, ambitious and timebound. I cannot imagine that housing would not feature centrally in that regard. It is a long way of answering the Deputy's question but we are very much engaged, along with a range of other Departments.