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

When I spoke in the Dáil I said - I still hold to this view - that a limited degree of leasing has some importance. That was the exact statement I made, which no one has quoted, for obvious reasons. In the long term it is not great value for money for us not to own the property at the end. That is my view. I have said that to the Minister. The Housing for All strategy will deal comprehensively with all these issues, but the key approach will be building for social housing, affordable housing, and cost rental and bringing back voids. Deputy Kelly made a fair point. We cannot have derelict and empty houses. A penalty for not building houses or bringing units back into play is on the agenda as well. We have to look at all measures to get supply up. We have to get to a minimum of 33,000 on average per year and more over the decade. There will be some years over this decade when we will have to get to 40,000 because we have now lost the guts of about 10,000 to the pandemic between last year and this year. My only objective is to get more houses built for people as fast as we possibly can using as many avenues as we possibly can that represent the best value for the taxpayer. That is what we will do under Housing for All.

In response to Deputy Paul Donnelly's point about the defects, the Government has a range of measures and schemes relating to defective products and so on but we need stronger mechanisms in place from the point of view of a regulatory framework, bonds, insurance and so on. The taxpayer cannot pay for everything forever in respect of the deficiencies of private sector operators. The taxpayer cannot be the last resort that just mops up everything. A lot of work is being done on the mica and pyrite schemes and other issues such as fire safety.

As for the strategic housing developments, I do not think the legal capacity is there to disapply retrospectively permissions that were granted, but the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, has been committed for quite some time to ending those. They are now being ended. Again, what has been striking is how few of them have followed through in being developed in many cases. One of the issues that Housing for All will look at will be how we get projects back on track and developed. There are lots of permissions out there. I am not just talking about SDZs.

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