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

A number of interventions have been made so I will need some time to deal with them.

Deputy McDonald spoke first. Government policy is very much focused on the key issue of the supply gap. I kept saying this to the Deputy for the past number of days. It is about supply, supply, supply. It is the key to the housing issue. We simply need to build more houses and we need to do it in a variety of ways. We do not need to put all of our eggs into the one basket, which was suggested by a number of speakers today.

Yes, the Government is committed to a massive social housing programme in comparison to what went on before. However, to get 50,000 social houses built in the next five years will be challenging to the local authorities and the agencies. The fallback of Deputy Barry is that we should have a massive programme, whatever that means. I have not seen one concrete proposal from Deputy Barry or others as to how to increase supply now, in the next three months or the next six months. I acknowledge that it needs a radical, whole-of-government approach. That is what we are going to do. We have been in office for ten months. In response to Deputy McDonald, I have not been in government for ten years. I am interested in the future and the young people of today and that the Government and this House can make a difference now in order that the young people of today have a realistic chance of getting housing and of buying housing. That is where my focus is.

Deputy Barry has spoken about a ticking political bomb for the Government. It is not about Government or parties. It should not be. It should not be about political point-scoring or who will gain an electoral advantage out of the crisis, which is what I am hearing from my perspective. It is about concrete measures that can get houses built and can enable houses to be affordable for young people. That does mean dealing with the supply gap and getting to a situation where we can build far more houses than we are currently building.

Taking last year, for example, approximately 20,000 houses were built. Where are the thousands and thousands of apartments the Deputies are all talking about? Some 20,000 houses were built last year and approximately 7,000 to 8,000 of that were social houses. Many more single houses were built all over Ireland. There is not private sector activity to the level there should be, actually. We need both public and private sector housing programmes. The ESRI has indicated saying we need 30,000 houses. Given the shortfall in the last three years and the impact of Covid, in my view, we need to increase that to potentially 40,000. Let us put the ideology to one side and get houses built. On a number of fronts, that is what we need to do. The State land is important. There is disagreement in terms of the remit and role of the Land Development Agency. It has been talked about for years. This Government is determined to get the legislative template through, to get action going and to get State land used for housing. In our view, there is much State land that is close to and in cities and towns that could be used for housing. Housing is the number one crisis and we must prioritise it above all and everything else.

Deputy Barry has spoken of a ticking political timebomb for the Government. It is not about the Government or parties. It should not be. It should not be about political point-scoring or who will gain an electoral advantage out of the crisis, which is what I am hearing from my perspective. It is about concrete measures that can get houses built, enable houses to be affordable for young people. That does mean dealing with the supply gap and getting to the situation where we can build far more houses that we are currently building. Taking last year, for example, around 20,00

That means using State land for social housing, affordable housing and a variety of schemes. It frustrates me that something like the Oscar Traynor Road issue can go on for years. That is an inability of the political system to deliver 800 houses that people desperately need. There are people in Dublin City Council who are going to go on interrogating this issue and will probably come up with new schemes that will take another five or six years to develop. That is what is going on in regard to many of the projects I outlined this morning that are being objected to.

If we are all agreed that this is a crisis that needs more supply, then we should deal with it in a really forthright way. Affordability is at the core of the Government's policy. The affordability legislation the Minister has introduced is designed to deal with the affordability question. There is investment going into capital, particularly in cities, regional cities and towns, to underpin the need for more residential development and housing. A total of €1.4 billion is going into water and €1.2 billion into the urban regeneration and development fund. The Sinn Féin leader spoke about the European Union and about Fianna Fáil using Structural Funds. Sinn Féin opposed the European Union from the get-go.

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