Kevin O'Keeffe (Cork East, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I acknowledge the proposals here today.

We have been waiting a long time for this. These proposals should have been in place even before the fall of the previous Government. The Minister of State, Deputy English, himself acknowledged the impending shortage of houses in this country.

In reading the opening speech of the Minister of State, Deputy D'Arcy, seeking access to funding has been a big problem for good builders in the past number of years and I welcome the Bill in progressing the construction of development and the provision of housing.

As I said, the process has been slow but, hopefully, we can move matters forward. On the number of houses delivered, as indicated by the CSO, 15,000 units were delivered in 2017. The number was so low because there was no money available for those who were building.

This year, of course, it has been acknowledged that maybe there are two types of developments out there. Perhaps there are builders still carrying land from the period when the price of land was significant. The second category of builders are those who came in now and are able to build. It is important that every builder is able to progress and build houses.

It has to be acknowledged that the availability of appropriate development finance for commercially viable residential properties has been identified as a key contributory factor in the ongoing shortfall in original supply. The Minister stated that the introduction of the HBFI will provide a crucial boost to the availability of this important source of finance but the Government must acknowledge that it has been slow in bringing this forward. I keep reiterating that. I am here just over two years and there was a housing crisis before that. The Government will say that it administered the economic downturn and had to take measures to safeguard the whole financial structure in the country. At the same time, we allowed a housing crisis to develop under our noses.

The cost of borrowing for builders is still too high. This Bill has to be welcomed. The number of active lenders in the State has substantially reduced. Some have left the State, at the same time, because of reckless lending. Mr. David Drumm admitted that the bank of which he was chief executive created the reckless lending in the country and things needed to be corrected, but there was a big drive in that period for more money to be made available to developers.

I welcome that the Government is taking action to be more approachable in making money available. At the end of this, we welcome that finance is being made available and we would ask that the Government get it in place as soon as possible. We have the homeless crisis. We have people looking for housing. At the same time, the costs of development have gone up, outside of the issue of the land, in the past ten years. The Government introduced additional measures, such as heat conservation, that now need to be put in place and which add significant cost to the construction of a dwelling.

I welcome the Bill. I hope that we can progress it but, as my party spokesman, Deputy Michael McGrath, has said, we need to move quicker.

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