Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I do not wish to spend much time on matters that have already been covered, such as the intricacies of medium-term objectives and the fiscal rules. I will concentrate on a view I hold and which was also expressed by a number of witnesses during our deliberations on the budget, which is that the fiscal space available, notwithstanding debates on whether we should recalculate it this or that way, is simply miserable compared with the requirements to invest in housing, health, education, public transport, climate mitigation and so forth. There is a list of strategically important areas of infrastructure spending and other forms of spending that will facilitate our economy becoming sustainable and robust in a volatile international environment. What does the Minister think about that? It is a very small amount of discretionary space to deal with the scale of the problems, most obviously, urgently and immediately the housing crisis. With regard to the housing crisis, does the Minister think that the plans, and the resources invested in them, are adequate to deal with the problem? The Minister has indicated that next year there will be 3,000 council houses and 5,000 social houses, whatever they are. That is against a background of 96,000 households on the list, although I believe that is an extremely conservative and, frankly, inaccurate figure. It is a drop in the ocean. Does the Minister not think we must dramatically increase the investment in social housing beyond what the Government has proposed in Rebuilding Ireland?

Social Justice Ireland says we need direct build of approximately 90,000 units over the next few years, whereas the Government's Rebuilding Ireland programme for direct build provides for much less. From the point of view of fiscal prudence with regard to Rebuilding Ireland, has the Minister calculated the cost of HAPS payments over the next number of years as against the cost of direct build, that is, the efficiency of relying overwhelmingly on HAPS, the private sector and making payments to private landlords, which in Rebuilding Ireland currently represents approximately two thirds of the money going out on housing plans, as against direct build? I am referring to the financial cost of that.