Aubrey McCarthy (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank everybody for being here. It is a full house and the solutions are certainly in this room. We all have a common goal, namely, we want to see more homes, we want to see them built faster and we also want them to be affordable.

If we look across the witnesses’ statements, it is all about infrastructure delays, planning inconsistencies, judicial reviews have been mentioned, etc. We have been talking in this committee for a number of months about the blockages and where they lie. The blockage with local authorities was the numbers were not being released. Now the section 28 has come in and we have had the Minister’s decree that all councils build. In general, where is the blockage now? The white flag has been raised and I am wondering where the blockages are. Also, Mr. O’Connell mentioned Portlaoise and 70 houses not being able to be finished because of the substation. We have had Uisce Éireann and the ESB in here and they are telling us the viability for building in Ireland is 30,000 houses, unless the infrastructure is increased, yet the Government figures are much higher. There seems to be a huge gap there. In my home town of Naas and in Kildare town there are two sites that are tier 1 yet they are not being developed. They have been zoned but they have not been given permission, so there seem to be blockages there. In today’s news, as Deputy McGrath mentioned, the water treatment plants in rural areas can be funded by the builder. There are no grants for that, it seems, so that will be passed on to the purchaser. The purchaser is paying taxes, rates and all the taxes they pay so technically the ordinary taxpayer is being charged twice for water and all the amenities that are being done.

I want to ask Cairn something. Mr. Stanley mentioned how the future sort of lies in apartments and we are at something like 29%, whereas we need to get to 50%. Will the new regulation regarding the 32 sq. m and the VAT measure solve it or is there another lever we need to pull to get this off the ground? I would also like to ask which European country has the best state of play so we can follow its lead. Those are my first questions.