Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to share time with Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan.

Nothing is more important to this country than tackling the housing crisis head-on. As I have said on a number of occasions, following a decade of undersupply rents are still too high, homebuilding is still too low and too many people cannot afford to buy their own home. Too many parents and grandparents are worried about where their children will live and far too many of our most vulnerable are without a safe and secure roof over their head. That is why housing is the biggest priority for the Government - a priority backed by €4.5 billion annually, as was outlined in the budget only last week.

Housing for All is the most ambitious housing plan in the history of the State and aims to build 300,000 new homes, 90,000 new social homes and at least 56,000 affordable homes by 2030. It sets out a goal to eliminate homelessness by 2030 and breathe fresh life into derelict and vacant homes throughout the country. It is a radical plan but it is realistic and realisable. It is fully funded, underpinned by record State investment that puts home ownership back at the heart of Irish life for those who need it.

The policy has four pathways to achieving housing for all: supporting home ownership and increasing affordability; eradicating homelessness, increasing social housing delivery and supporting social inclusion; increasing new housing supply overall, which we see happening this year significantly; and addressing vacancy and efficient use of existing stock. I know how hard things are in the housing sector today but Housing for All, as a strategy, is starting to make a real difference with a fundamental step change in housing policy. Across its four pathways, delivery is the key to making Housing for All a success and getting to grips with the housing crisis. Whether anyone likes to acknowledge it, the combination of the Covid lockdowns and hyperinflation have had a negative impact on supply. It is dishonest for anyone to ignore that. However, real momentum is gathering in delivery.

Since Housing for All was launched just over a year ago, we have: the highest home completions since 2008; the highest home commencements or new homes started on record; the highest planning permissions since 2008; 16,000 first-time buyers over the past 12 months alone; in excess of 20,000 more workers in the construction sector; falling vacancy levels; the first ever cost-rental homes - a tenure that has been discussed and debated in the House for years and we are delivering - and the first cost-rental tenants in place with hundreds more to follow; and the first affordable homes to purchase in well over a decade.

We will exceed the target of 25,000 units this year - 24,600 to be exact - but we need to, and will, do much more under Housing for All. As I stated previously, I will continue to use every weapon in our armoury to get bricks and mortar into the ground for homes working people can afford to buy and support those without adequate shelter. To have a real impact, this must involve pragmatic measures with both the public and private sectors. We cannot fight this housing crisis with one hand tied behind our back letting the perfect be the enemy of the good or ideology win over pragmatism.

I am a firm believer in home ownership. Housing for All is laying the foundations for home ownership for a generation. To help accomplish this, we are building the first affordable purchase homes in more than a decade, and targeting 36,000 new affordable homes by 2030. To report progress on that, under the local authority-led affordable purchase schemes, I have approved 27 schemes across the country that will deliver in excess of 1,800 homes approved under the affordable housing fund, to which I made further changes two weeks ago to increase the subvention the State can make in affordable purchase and to make significant changes as well to the cost-rental model to help the approved housing bodies, AHB, sector and local authority sector with the cost of increased rate inflation. We are extending the help-to-buy grant - a grant that has helped nearly 35,000 homeowners buy their own home, to 2024. We have established the game-changer first home scheme, the shared equity scheme, for which we have seen nearly 500 eligibility certificates issue since July. This involves 500 people who are able to buy 500 homes and there will be hundreds and thousands more under this scheme. Last weekend, at the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis, I announced that I will extend the first home scheme to own-built homes across rural Ireland. We have started rolling out €50,000 grants to buy and refurbish empty and derelict homes in rural areas, towns and villages and city centres with the above-shop units available there. We are bringing in pragmatic supports to help defray the cost of refurbishment of those properties. In the four short weeks of August, without a big push behind it through a public information campaign, we received more than 200 applications.

There is a real desire among people to take on those properties and to tackle vacancy.

We have introduced a tax credit worth €1,000 for each individual renter in 2023 to help them fight the high cost of rent. We have also reformed the tenant purchase scheme to allow pensioners to buy their homes.

I am particularly concerned about blockages in the planning system. That is why, in tandem with the Attorney General, we have initiated the most comprehensive review of the planning system in a quarter of a century. I expect a consolidated planning Bill to come before the House in the coming weeks and look forward to engagement with Deputies both in government and opposition to pass that important legislation. We are setting out new guidelines to facilitate rural one-off homes. I am amending planning guidelines to enable own-door homes and putting in place land value sharing, a residential zoned land tax and a vacant property tax to tackle land prices, promote development and penalise the underuse of land and homes. I can also confirm to the House that I am eliminating the separate build-to-rent standards. That means that, from the end of this year, every apartment application will involve a single build-to-buy standard and those apartments will be allowed to be sold and will not be restricted to rental. As I said at the Fianna Fáil Ard-Fheis, if it is good enough to rent, it should be good enough to buy. We need to level the playing field between homeowners and investors.

I fully recognise the scale of the challenge of homelessness and the need to tackle social housing waiting lists. Far too many are without shelter. The personal impact of homelessness on individuals and families is devastating. The key is to increase supply to give homeless people safe shelter. Housing for All marks the biggest housing programme in our history. A total of 90,000 new social homes will be built by 2030, more than ever before, and we will deliver more new-build social homes this year than in any year since the foundation of the State. The ambitious Housing First strategy is being rolled out, with 282 tenancies to be set up this year, building on the success of last year. Housing assistance payment, HAP, discretion rates have been increased, and I will soon set out the new HAP homeless rate. We have expanded tenant in situpurchases to prevent homelessness. To be clear to Deputies, I have instructed all local authorities that where a HAP tenant or a rental accommodation scheme, RAS, tenant has received a notice to quit from his or her landlord with the intention to sell, to purchase that home. Since I made those changes in July and given full discretion to the local authorities, more than 300 additional homes have come in in a short time. I want that expedited and expanded. Budget 2023 has increased homelessness funding by 11%. Minimum notice-to-quit periods have been extended and there have been rent supports of almost €1.2 billion for some 500,000 renters. We will launch a new youth homelessness strategy in the coming weeks. Leasing is being phased out to refocus on direct delivery, but we will use it where it works, particularly when it is focused on housing our homeless community.

I acknowledge that the pace of delivery can be frustrating. However, with a fully funded plan, fully resourced local authorities and AHBs empowered to deliver, they will deliver at scale this year. Delivery is what we need to tackle homelessness head-on. Our plan, Housing for All, is a fully funded, multi-annual plan with homeownership and delivery at its heart. No other party has put forward any credible alternative or any substantive plan.

That is all too clear when we look at some of the inconsistencies and inaccuracies in the alternative budget by the main Opposition party. It commits to delivering an additional 2,900 new social homes in 2023 above Government targets. Sinn Féin's cost per unit, however, as I said last week, makes no allowance for inflation or the supply chain issues that have arisen as a result of the war in Ukraine. The figures are based directly on costs in 2021. It is not credible for anyone to claim to be able to deliver more units more quickly with less money.

This debate may be an opportunity to say there is another enormous €300 million black hole at the heart of Sinn Féin's rent tax credit, with more than 400,000 renters eligible. The proposal put forward by the party would cost €600 million, but it has budgeted for only half that. It is an enormous black hole. Our tax credit of €1,000 per renter is real and will be received by tenants in 2023, and they need it. I have not yet seen any published detailed costings, despite Deputy Ó Broin promising he would publish them last week. It is important for renters that they see real proposals and real costings. We have put forward such costings in our budget. I earnestly believe that it is crucial that people do not try to cynically exploit the housing crisis for their own political ends. Renters are struggling to make ends meet. That is why we have brought forward a real measure of €1,000 in tax credits for them in 2023 and why we continue to expand affordable cost rental and the roll-out of that programme.

One thing that is crystal clear is that Sinn Féin, in the alternative housing plan it has put forward, continues its attack on homeownership. The alternative budget proposes very clearly to abolish three key supports for homebuyers. It is further proof that the party does not believe in homeownership. It will scrap the help-to-buy grant, worth up to €30,000, which has supported nearly 35,000 homeowners to get their deposits together. It will scrap the first home scheme, which has started well, with hundreds of people having received eligibility certificates, first contracts being issued and the first keys being turned in doors since the launch of the scheme in July. It is a targeted support to help homeowners and it is working and will expand even further. It is not a second mortgage but an equity stake taken by the State. It is helping people, many of whom are renters or who have been living at home with their folks for longer than they would wish or, indeed, longer than their parents would wish. It is a real measure that has been brought forward and is working to support homeownership. Inexplicably, Sinn Féin has said it will also scrap the new Croí Cónaithe vacant and derelict property grants of up to €50,000 to buy and to refurbish empty homes. As I said, we have had approximately 200 applications for those grants. All of us agree that vacancy and dereliction is a scourge. We are moving forward to bring in schemes through repair and lease for our local authorities and targeted compulsory purchase order, CPO, programmes. What is wrong with homebuyers and people who want to buy their own homes getting support from the State to take vacant properties, to buy them and to get assistance from the State to do up those homes? Sinn Féin's position is inexplicable.

To be fair, Deputy Ó Broin's position is not shared by many of his party's Deputies. I welcome the support of Deputies Gould, Carthy, Kerrane and Cronin, to name but a few, in their questions about expanding and strengthening these schemes. In the few minutes I have left I wish to advise the House that Deputy Cronin asked the Minister for Finance "if he will revisit the help-to-buy scheme in terms of its loan-to-value ratio borrowing requirement being 70% when such threshold precludes significant numbers from accessing the scheme". Deputy Ó Broin's colleague wants people to access the scheme and wants the scheme changed to facilitate that. Deputy Kerrane further asked "if ... [the Minister for Finance] intends to extend eligibility for the help-to-buy scheme to pre-owned homes for first-time buyers". This is a scheme that her party and its housing spokesperson want to abolish, yet she wants to change it and recognises the fact that the scheme is working. Deputy Gould, who in many instances comes into this House and rightly raises vacancy and dereliction and who is Sinn Féin's junior spokesperson on housing, has asked me my "views on whether the strict criteria for the location of suitable housing under the Croí Cónaithe fund are too exclusionary and reducing access to the scheme". I was happy to reply to the Deputy that I have expanded the scheme not just to towns and villages but to rural one-off homes and, indeed, to our cities. He might not realise that his own party wants to exclude the scheme completely, abolish it and put it in the bin.

The Deputy asked for changes to that scheme, which I have brought in, not at his request, I might add, but because we believe it makes sense. Deputy Ó Broin might have a sit down with Deputy Gould to explain the Sinn Féin housing policy.

Deputy Matt Carthy asked the Minister for Finance the reason purchasers of newly-completed homes at Loreto Wood in County Cavan are unable to avail of the help-to-buy scheme. If Sinn Féin was in government, no one, not just people in Cavan but throughout the country, would be able to avail of the scheme because the party would abolish it. It would also abolish the Croí Cónaithe and first home schemes. These are clear examples as to why Sinn Féin does not support homeownership. On this side of the House, my party, Fianna Fáil and our colleagues in government fully support homeownership. Not only do we support it, we are doing something about it by bringing forward real measures that are going to help people.

Housing for All has unprecedented ambition and the realism to deliver homes and support home ownership. Following a decade of undersupply and in difficult international conditions, it is starting to deliver real progress. It is the only credible and funded plan put forward by any party. To be clear, it is a multi-annual, fully funded plan that is delivering-----

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