Enda Kenny (Mayo, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I commend Deputy Curran for chairing the Oireachtas committee. I do not yet know what is in his report but, believe me, it will be a very welcome addition to set of propositions which have come now from the different Departments with responsibility in this area to the Minister for housing, planning and local government. These are the Departments of housing, planning and local government, Public Expenditure and Reform, Social Protection, Justice and Equality and Transport, Tourism and Sport, all of which feed into the development of the strategy the Minister is putting together. Deputy Curran's committee's recommendations will be very gratefully received in that regard. I hope that the Minister for housing, planning and local government, Deputy Simon Coveney, is in a position to bring his draft strategy, an action plan for housing, to the Cabinet sub-committee by the end of the month and that we can develop it into a formal strategy, debate it here and, more importantly, implement it.

On the €200 million, which is double what was committed in the programme for Government for infrastructure development for access to sites, work there will start immediately and the first draw down will take place in 2017. I agree with Deputy Martin that obviously the practice of building houses by local authorities has drifted over the years. It seemed to morph into the approved housing bodies, which would build houses, but obviously if tenants acquire those houses they can never buy them in the way the Department of the Environment used to provide through the scheme for tenant purchase every number of years so that they could own their own houses. The Minister has already called all the chief executives of the local authorities together and given them their targets and response times. He needs to know what it is they are going to do to start building houses for tenants. He has already made comments that if this does not happen, he is quite prepared to move project managers onto sites to see that it does. This is all about the supply of houses which is the great challenge when one now sees so much commercial activity going on around the country. The housing construction sector has not been able to respond for a variety of reasons. That is now being addressed. I hope Deputy Curran's report on Friday will include some practical recommendations that will be of value here.

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