Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees
Tuesday, 4 November 2025
Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage
Unlocking Barriers to the Delivery of Housing: Discussion
2:00 am
Ms Madeleina Loughrey-Grant:
Yes, that is it.
Ireland has changed hugely in the past 21 years and coming back and taking a step back to have a look at the resilience of our economy, I note we have a budget surplus that is the envy of many nations. We talked about policy and mention was made of the Netherlands. There will be many policy lessons from across Europe. The UK Government's finances at the moment are far more constrained than ours. However, despite the different contexts of the UK and Ireland, the challenges in the two are similar in terms of all the issues we talked about today, such as planning issues, infrastructure sequencing, construction capacity, skills and affordability. I will mention one example of how infrastructure can unlock housing. It is the impact the Elizabeth line had in the UK on enabling the building of about 55,000 new homes within 1 km of stations. It drove growth and regeneration around those station areas and brought increased investor confidence. To pull on the thread around investment in infrastructure and major transport, it builds confidence, unlocks land, enables mixed tenure housing and is an engine for both homes and social mobility. It is something we need to focus on.
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