Peter Burke (Longford-Westmeath, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have listened carefully to many of the Deputies opposite in their well-intentioned arguments on the increase in the cost of living. As a rural Deputy in Longford-Westmeath, I too, through my weekly clinics, meet very vulnerable people every single week that I attend Dáil Éireann and right through the year, people who are trying to find a solution, who are looking for help and who want support at a very vulnerable time in their lives. One thing I want to make very clear from the outset is that I am meeting vulnerable people in very difficult situations and I am doing my best, as part of a Government response, to try to provide sustainable and genuine solutions for those people.

If we look in broad terms at where we are currently, with a new plan to deliver large-scale residential housing for our citizens right across the State out to 2030, we have seen small, incremental progress. However, when we look at the big numbers since 2016, we have increased the delivery of social homes tenfold. Those are real solutions for people right across the State. That is coming from an extremely low base, where two thirds of construction sectors workers had left the State, where our economy was spending 50% more than it took in as income and where we had 3,000 ghost estates, with the Department trying to implement remedial schemes up and down the country. We have moved to a position where we have a very clear, plan-led direction for our country, and where we have a new national planning framework to deliver and unlock the potential right across our State for all of our citizens.

When we look at the housing plan, €4 billion in multi-annual funding is guaranteed to give certainty to the marketplace and the State in delivering viable solutions. We see the large-scale increase in affordable purchase and also the cost rental model providing certainty for citizens at 25% below market rent. Those are real solutions. In this city over the last four years, there has been a 33% reduction in the social housing list. That is progress. I know many will criticise the pace and it should be done faster, but given the circumstances the Government is operating in and the huge challenges, it is making progress. When we look at the commencement notices, we can see 31,000 units are now commenced, which is a huge, 42% improvement on 2020. Again, those are real solutions for families up and down this State and will provide huge hope.

In my locality, when I see people coming in and out of my clinic, I can point to four or five individual sites in my town, with more than 100 units being delivered on them. That is hope for people because the diggers and the tradespeople are there, delivering those houses, which are coming.

I know it is difficult to get to that space but they are being delivered at scale.

There is a cross-Government approach in the way we have supported the most vulnerable in our society to defray the cost of living increases. That goes from increasing the State pension at a time when inflation was not as high to more targeted measures like the fuel allowance payment and our drugs payment scheme. These support people on the front line who need that support most. On a broader base, people who are struggling like two-income families or middle-income earners have the energy payment, as well as the reductions that were taken from our standard rate cut-off point and the increase in tax credits over the budgetary process. The party I am a member of increased the minimum wage by 37% in recent years and we have put a priority on taking 35% of workers out of the tax net because they are the most vulnerable people in our society. The party I am a member of saw the deprivation index reduce because we are supporting the most vulnerable in our society with those targeted measures. We do so by increasing housing supply, by supporting those in most need through the measures I referenced and by ensuring that those in a progressive tax system who do not earn as much do not pay any tax. We saw the report of the Comptroller and Auditor General and many people quote different figures but it said in black and white that the effective tax rate for high net worth individuals was over 40%. When I was a remember of the Committee of Public Accounts that was clear on page 249 of that report and I will not forget it. When one hears discourse in this House sometimes one would think there is a magic number of people earning huge and colossal amounts of money at the expense of the State and paying no tax. The research and evidence do not back up that and one can see that in the Comptroller and Auditor General’s report.

As we try to ensure people have real solutions, we see other parties promise and talk about what they will do but if one looks at what they said and promised compared with what this Government did, we have exceeded much of what the party opposite in particular said it would do. In particular, I refer to its target of delivering 36,500 houses from its 2016 manifesto and the Government delivered 39,000 houses a year earlier. I look at our analysis and I see 16,000 Momma and Poppa landlords exiting the marketplace since 2016. Then I look at Sinn Féin seeking to put a €400 second home charge on those people who are also trying to make ends meet and deliver sustainable rental accommodation. Sinn Féin’s response to a market in crisis is to tax it more. When I look at housing developments there are objections from Sinn Féin time after time. We saw public houses proposed to be exclusively built on public land in Kilbride Lodge in Wicklow objected to by Sinn Féin. This is at a time when we are trying to prioritise employment and we saw how the Minister for Finance underwrote employment and supported people throughout the crisis, be it through the employment wage subsidy scheme, EWSS, the Covid restrictions support scheme, CRSS, and rates waivers. He did so to ensure that people did not lose that vital link with their jobs. At that time Sinn Féin was proposing to increase employer’s PRSI and put a greater tax on people being employed and in turn no risk assessment had been carried out for that. At a time when the Government was spending billions trying to maintain that link between the employer and the employee, Sinn Féin’s response was to tax them more.

I refer to the various mechanisms that are being proposed opposite such as increasing stamp duty by 66%. If a small business owner is expanding then how will that fare with him or her trying to get into a new premises or expand the business? If a farmer is trying to consolidate his or her holdings then how will that affect him or her? Not everyone qualifies for the minority of reliefs one sometimes hears referenced by Sinn Féin. Again, people have to be supported in the best use of public resources and when one is in government decisions have to be made. Decisions are difficult because one is trying to balance competing interests every day of the week and that is something I do not take lightly. I am privileged and humbled to be part of a Government that is doing its best. I know the background I come from and the people I meet week-in and week-out at my clinic and I can genuinely say that every day in government one does one’s best to take the best decisions for the best interests of the public. In the measures we have brought in that I have referenced we are doing our best to do that.

We should never take away hope in a debate because the numbers back up the fact that we are at a huge capacity in our construction sector. We can see that we are getting more apprenticeships in through the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris, in further and higher education. We can also see that the output in completions forecasted by the Central Bank in the coming years will exceed 30,000 and that we will get to that figure of 33,000 that the ESRI says we need. Hopefully we will exceed that and we are working so hard to deliver that across all tenures. Members can come into this House and identify many different problems but those on the other benches are trying to do their best to meet one of the biggest challenges we have ever faced in housing, coming from a position when all our local authorities were saturated in debt less than a decade ago. The measures we are bringing in include bringing vacant properities back into use. Our zoned land and capture sharing taxes are potentially coming down the line shortly, which signals to the marketplace that we mean business in delivering large numbers of homes for the most vulnerable and for every part of society. It has to be a broad base that delivers homes all across our economy.

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