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

On the first point, we are not allowing anybody to write our housing policies. Generally speaking, I think the budget was a landmark budget in terms of housing, with €3.1 billion allocation and the largest amount of social housing - to be built this year - on record. Obviously, Covid will interrupt that this month. Be under no illusion - we are taking a multi-strand approach to housing.

There is strong investment in social housing in order to address homelessness and deal with the long waiting lists for such housing. We are accelerating our efforts in that regard, which began prior to the budget in terms of getting voids back into operation and providing more than 2,500 local authority houses through investment. This year will be quite dramatic in terms of the social housing output. This will be the result of the prioritisation afforded to social housing in the budget and the allocation of unprecedented funding to achieve that output.

Affordable housing and home ownership are significant planks in terms of the Government's commitment in this area. That is why we are continuing with the help-to-buy scheme and why we enhanced it in the July stimulus package. I know that Sinn Féin opposed this. It seems that the party is opposed to the concept of home ownership in general. It has opposed many motions and voted against help-to-buy initiatives. In addition, it is against the equity scheme before it has even been established.

The objective behind the equity scheme is try to give young people the chance to buy homes and to enhance the affordability of homes. Matters are extremely difficult for them in this regard in the current circumstances and we are conscious of that. We need a balanced approach and a suite of methods to deal with the housing crisis from homelessness in terms of the allocation of specific resources, reducing the amount of emergency accommodation and the number of people in such accommodation, building more social housing through approved housing bodies and local authorities and developing a strong affordable home dimension in order that younger people and those who are working will be in a position to own homes in the localities in which they reside. Work in this regard is under way. The Minister brought the outlines of legislation to the Government. That is being worked on and the various inputs from different officials and different policy perspectives will be assessed. The overall objective is to help people to be in a position to afford to buy homes.

The vast bulk of housing being built is social housing or individual homes. There are no large developers involved in building massive housing estates right now. That is clear from the figures. We need a sense of perspective when language is being bandied about. We need far more activity in the housing market than we currently have if we are to get to the 33,000 to 35,000 houses per annum the Economic and Social Research Institute estimates will be required in the coming years to deal with the housing crisis in a sustainable way.

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