Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy knows me pretty well by now. I can be accused of much, but I do not wash my hands of problems. I have responsibility for the housing market, people who are homeless and implementing an ambitious housing and homelessness strategy for the Government. A piece of the jigsaw that is not fully filled in yet is a rental strategy, which we have committed to having in place before the end of the year.

There is considerable detail in the five pillars of our housing strategy. The only pillar that does not have as much detail as we would like is the rental pillar. For this reason, we need to address in the coming weeks some of the issues in the strategy that the Deputy has raised. We are holding broad consultations to get the balance right.

I will not wash my hands of this matter. We will be taking risks from a policy point of view. They will be managed risks in terms of making policy choices that we believe will improve the situation. What I do not want to do is make a bad situation even worse by introducing regulations that will stop the relatively small amount of building that has happened to date and the potential momentum to build many more rental properties. We must keep the momentum going.

I take the Deputy's point that all of this takes time. Even rapid-build houses cannot be built overnight. In the meantime, we have a broken market and I want to fix it as quickly as possible through increased supply first and foremost. We can provide supports and reassurance to the landlord and the tenant, both of whom are under stress at times. There is a significant number of tenants, particularly in the Dublin, Cork, Limerick and Galway areas where there is considerable pressure.

The House will debate whether we got the strategy right in some detail when we publish it in a few weeks' time, but we will make every effort to get the balance right so that, in two years' time, we will be discussing a market that is coming back towards equilibrium in terms of supply and demand instead of needing more emergency-type debates and measures because of a fundamental supply deficit that will exist indefinitely. We cannot have the latter.

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