Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

When it comes to this policy matter, and almost any policy matter, the role of the Government is to listen to everyone. Of course we will listen to entities that can provide finance. Of course we will listen to builders who have experience in building homes. As politicians, our constituents are the people to whom we listen the most. Everyone on this side of the House is aware that a large number of those who come into our constituency clinics are struggling to hold onto their homes. Large numbers of people in their 20s and 30s who aspire to own homes for the first time are struggling to do so. I assure the Deputy they are the people to whom we, as practising politicians, listen most often and most frequently.

In terms of next year, because of the increases we are seeing in housing activity, in planning permissions coming through, commencements and so on, we expect approximately 20,000 new homes to be built in 2018 - a significant increase on this year - of which 15,000 will be provided by the private sector and in the region of 5,000 by the Government. It is not the case that we will rely on the private sector to build. We will ramp up the provision of council houses and apartments to approximately 5,000 next year, with 3,800 to be built directly by local authorities and 1,200 to be acquired - in some cases through bringing long-term voids back into use and through Part V provision in others.

In terms of land hoarding and vacant sites not being developed, we have introduced a vacant site levy. The first step will be to draw up a register of sites that are vacant, establish that they are vacant and then impose the levy in respect of them. That is a policy that exists already. We will impose a vacant site levy of 3% on undeveloped sites. It certainly is not working yet. The advice we have is that we need to give people notice to develop. We cannot just impose the levy immediately; people have to be given an opportunity to develop sites. However, that will start to kick in and we will begin to see some of those sites coming into use.

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