Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Immediate action is needed in housing to get more people housed, to get more houses built and, particularly, to get homelessness numbers down. Covid-19 is having an impact and we should be clear that it will have an impact on the timing of referendums. It has also had an impact in the early part of this year on house completions nationally because of the lockdown and so on. That said, in the July stimulus programme, for example, we provided additional resources to get 2,500 voids repaired to get them back into operation for people on the waiting lists. That is an example of the type of proactive and quick measures that are designed to get things moving in housing. We believe we need an affordable housing scheme to enable people who have a genuine aspiration to buy a house to be in a position to do so, and that is being worked on in detail by the Minister. He is working actively on the homeless issue and is in constant contact with all of the non-Government agencies and organisations that work so hard and diligently on the homeless issue. That work will continue.

The Government is pursuing a constitutional referendum on housing but greater detail and consideration are needed for such a proposal before it can be put to the electorate and specific timelines outlined but the programme for Government commits to holding a referendum on housing.

On land prices, a number of measures can be taken, short of a constitutional referendum in the first instance, to penalise land hoarding and to make it-----

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