Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputies very much for those questions. I accept there is an issue with productivity in the private sector, and indeed in the public sector, with regard to the delivery of more homes but in the answer I gave to Deputy O'Callaghan, I made the point the Department of housing already has many different measures under way to support productivity within the sector. I outlined what they are. I do not believe the private sector is making a choice to, by and large, pocket the different supports that are being made available and to avoid using those supports to deliver more homes. All the different spending measures available that are overseen by the Department of housing are all based on the delivery of more homes, whether that is the STAR programme, the different programmes that are in place to deliver affordable housing or the funding made available through the AHB sector, the ability of the construction sector to access those supports is tied into homes being delivered. If we significantly increase the level of homes available, as I believe we can, we will need a bigger private sector to do that. The role of the State, the funding that has been made available through the State in recent years to deliver more homes has massively increased, but even with the funding that is going to be made available directly by the State to support the delivery of more homes and the infrastructure that will deliver more homes up to 2029 - as I said earlier, it is an additional €15 billion - we need the private sector to deliver more homes. In the absence of that, the ability of the State to deliver the homes we know need to be built will be increasingly challenged because it will have to step into the place of the private sector, which would create financial risks and we would not be able to get to a point where we are able to deliver the 60,000 homes we know are needed. I accept this is just a point of difference between me and the members of the Opposition here but the private sector has a role to play in the delivery of more homes. That is being accompanied by the State playing a very large role, and a bigger one, in the years ahead in the delivery of those homes.

On the point Deputy O'Callaghan made about the impact it is going to have on the price of development land, it is not a matter that has been raised with me so far in the analysis we have done on this, but it is obviously something we will monitor. The reason for this is we look at this particular issue and the fact we have tens of thousands of apartments - I think it is between 30,000 and 40,000 apartments - that have planning permission but are not being built. Those apartments will have planning permission in which the cost of land is already baked into the economics of the particular projects. As for the different issues or risks we have considered in relation to this proposal, my analysis and judgment is the effect a measure like this could have on the price of development land is relatively muted. There are other forces that could affect the price of land in the time ahead but that is the reason we have the zoned land tax to try to deal with that kind of issue and create the incentives and sanctions that are necessary to ensure homes are built where land is zoned with the intention of having homes built on it, which is not happening on the scale we want.

On the point made about the profitability of apartments, I accept this is a measure that is going to increase the profitability of apartments but in turn we are hoping it is going to lead to those apartments being built and the tens of thousands of unbuilt homes that have planning permission to be built, and those homes will be apartments. I go back to the point I made at the very beginning, which is we cannot deliver the scale of additional housing we want in our country without the private sector playing a role in it. This is a targeted measure that aims to facilitate that.