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

First of all, the Deputy is incorrect and is wrong. We know that Covid-19 has had a very significant impact on the housing situation in 2020. It is true that Rebuilding Ireland home loan approvals have been down this year because of Covid-19 and significantly so in quarters 1 and 2. The pandemic impacted significantly on the building sector because of the first lockdown, and that has followed through. Commercial mortgage approvals, by the way, were down 30% in quarters 1 and 2 of 2020.

The Government, in the budget, has brought in a €3.3 billion investment programme for both social and affordable housing. It is the largest ever scale of investment in housing by the State. The issue will be delivery of construction and getting the projects built. The commitment is to deliver social and affordable housing in various forms. Covid has also created another situation which will ultimately have an impact on housing. That is the enormous increase in household savings throughout the country because of the impact of the crisis on spending in the economy during the past nine months. That is being evaluated in terms of its potential impacts on the market over the coming year.

The Minister provided significant resources in the budget for affordable housing in different formats, not just through the serviced sites fund but also through the local infrastructure housing activation fund and undertaking to deliver a new affordable purchase shared equity scheme for first-time buyers and a new funding model to accelerate the delivery of cost rental homes through the approved housing body sector. Some €200 million has been put into financing the Rebuilding Ireland home loan scheme. The Government is absolutely committed to it and legislation will be brought forward by the Minister in the coming while to deal with the affordable issue. Legislation relating to the Land Development Agency is also progressing and we have put a very priority on it. We discussed the issue at the last meeting of the Cabinet subcommittee on housing and we see it as an additional important lever in terms of getting increased capacity.

The Deputy keeps on talking about developers and so on. The bottom line is that the output in 2020 will be approximately 18,000 houses, if we get there. Covid has had a very negative impact. Next year, the target could be around 25,000. Up to 12,500 of those houses will be approved housing body and local authority housing. There is no huge private sector out there at the moment in terms of house construction. That is the reality. The approach to housing has to be multipronged and multidimensional. It cannot be a one-dimensional, ideological approach, which the Deputy's party has advocated for too long and that has resulted in a lot of schemes being voted down or delayed. We need supply of housing in different forms. We need the private sector to develop housing, we need social housing developed at an unprecedented scale, which we are committed to and which we have provided the resources for, and we need affordable housing that is supported by the State, which we are committed to doing and which we are going to provide funding to do. Cost rental models and newer initiatives will also be supported and financed.

Our approach is to ensure that at all levels, at local level and at national level, there is a whole collective effort to get houses built and avoid situations such as we had last week where a scheme for 950 houses was delayed for ideological reasons. That is not sustainable if we are genuinely to tackle the housing crisis we face in this country. The Government is only five months in office but I can tell the Deputy that we are very determined to get to grips with the housing issue and resolve it.

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