Joe Flaherty (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome all the speakers. The discussion has been very informative and I have learnt an awful lot from what they have provided. There will be some ideological differences in how we address the housing crisis, but the policies we have at the moment are the policies we have and we have four years to sort this out. We will work with what we have, and if there is a change of Government, there will be some new alternative.

I will look at Cairn first and I will probably come to Ms Loughrey-Grant, especially seeing as she is back from Laing O'Rourke. I spent a summer working with Laing O'Rourke. I decided then that construction was not for me and that politics was an easier life. I hope Ms Loughrey-Grant fared much better with Ray and Des O'Rourke than I did, but that is an aside. Cairn has done a lot of work. In relation to apartments, I think the optimum figure we need to get to is 30,000 per annum. I assume that is predominantly Dublin and the other major urban centres. From January 2020 to July 2025, 114,000 apartments were applied for. We will say 69,000 of those have been consented, but only 28,000 have been commenced. That is less than half. We hear about the issue with the land. Why have we commenced only 28,000, less than half of the 69,000 consented?