Steven Matthews (Wicklow, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister, his advisers and the departmental officials for producing this Housing for All strategy. I acknowledge the collaborative approach we had in preparing this document. It is a long-term plan, incorporating many green objectives that started off as discussions with the Minister and his advisers. We improved those ideas and now we see them in a strategy and in legislation.

Cost rental has been the core of the Green Party housing policy for a long time. We met our Green colleagues in Vienna to look at its world-class cost-rental model. I do not believe anyone in this House could argue with the cost-rental model. We have introduced it into Irish legislation for the first time. I expect the numbers will increase over the time as the Land Development Agency, LDA, scales up and as we attract investors into that space with those limited returns that would suit those ethical long-term investors or pension funds. I expect that number to scale up, because when representatives of the LDA appeared before our committee, they said cost rental would be a focus of their work and I believe they will deliver on that.

I listened to the Minister's opening speech in which he referred to cost rental as being a game changer, which is exactly how I described it to people on doorsteps during the previous general election campaign. I am proud we are legislating for this and that we are delivering this in government.

Urban regeneration and addressing the vacancy and dereliction that exists on many of our streets is a core part of this plan. There are thousands of opportunities to take an existing building, renovate it, refurbish it and then rejuvenate it, to bring life and living back into the town and above shops or, in limited cases, instead of a shop. Croí Cónaithe is putting the life and the heart back into those towns.

We need to put in place supports to assist people who want to take a derelict or vacant building because it is difficult to get the loans in certain circumstances. It is awkward to build in town centres. There can be traffic management issues, live streets, neighbours and all those kinds of difficulties. Often it is so much easier to go with a greenfield development and I can see the attraction of that. With those buildings we have in our town centres, I firmly believe the greenest building is one that is already built that we can invest in, adapt, repurpose, change its use and upgrade it to live in it.

When that life and living and vibrancy is put back into a town centre, it generates an economic return to that town. It also generates a societal return for that town and rebuilds that community. It is hard to put into tangible economics what that can generate for a town. It is an incredibly important part of the Housing for All strategy.

The target of producing 33,000 homes annually is grounded in the ESRI analysis on population growth, persons per dwelling, demographic changes etc. It is a realistic figure. It is challenging but deliverable over the course of this strategy. I listened to the Opposition Members who are highly critical of this figure. They have claimed it should be higher, quicker etc. If we had said 40,000, they would have said 50,000. They do not deal in facts or detail.

See this speech in context