Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am not stating that it is what the Deputy said. I will be very clear, however: there is no intention of relaxing regulations. We want top-class, quality houses, and that is what people are investing in. There are too many people out there who have high mortgages on poor-quality houses. That cannot happen again.

The certification process is often blamed here. It is claimed it is too costly. The cost does not necessarily relate to the certification process; it is the additional cost to build a house properly, which did not always happen in the past, to meet those regulations. There are high-quality homes being built because of the certification process and proper regulations and adherence to them. If done properly, the certification process can be carried out without causing too much distress to people. I ask the Deputy to trust me on this, though: people are much better off investing in a certification process. I know that people choose not to go this route when building their own one-off homes. I would not recommend this because I have seen too many houses that are not built to a high standard.

I want to be very clear that the tax system for individual landlords is being considered. A working group is in place to examine this in order to see whether individual landlords are being treated fairly. As for institutional investors, tax changes have been made to encourage resources to be pooled together to be invested in housing because we want to develop a proper, functional rental market. We accept that the rent is too high and we are all working to increase supply to bring rental costs down. This is a problem in the short term, but we will be fixed with supply in the long term. I have been working with the various developers weekly on many of the sites to which I refer. The State does get involved. We purchase houses and compete for vacant properties that no one else is purchasing. Some of these sites often get activated because an investor, the State or someone else steps in to buy a chunk of the properties from the plans to get the scheme started. We do this in some cases too because, again, we want to keep sites open and keep activity going. It is important that we get the right blend, and we are getting it.

An impression has been given this week that it is all skewed one way, which is just not factually true. If Deputy Troy analyses the market last year, he will see the sectors involved. There are probably fewer than 4,000 units in the investment sector; up to 6,000 units are being used for social housing purposes; the housing market itself accounts for over 11,500 units; and one-off housing accounts for 5,000 units. This is quite a reasonable divide across the system, so the impression being given this week that it is all skewed in one direction does not represent the truth.

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