Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It was 8 May, which I think was 13 days ago. Deputy Bacik's party has been in government. When one gets a report of over 400 pages, 83 recommendations and over 500 actions and subactions, one generally likes to consider them, work with one's team and develop responses. I do not think that 13 days is a long period of time to elapse. This is what a responsible Minister would do. We will publish the report this week. It is important that we publish the report because - I say this with respect to the Deputy - she asked whether the Government would implement this recommendation and that recommendation. With the greatest of respect to her and the House, people have not seen the recommendations. She might not even agree with them all herself. How does she know yet? So, before she calls on us to implement the recommendations, it is important to see them. We can set up housing commissions, but this is the Parliament of Ireland. This is where the people's representatives make decisions and where the Government makes decisions as well. It makes sense to publish the report in full and to publish all the actions. People will see a number of actions and recommendations that the Government has acted on already. I heard on radio this morning references to planning reform. The biggest planning reform possible is going on in this House right now with the planning Bill, which we want to see passed before this place breaks for the summer recess. An awful lot of work is going on and it is important to see the report in the light of day, compare and contrast where we are with a range of different recommendations and, indeed, see if there is a consensus or a divergence of views around some recommendations.

I will be very clear – it is absolutely my position and absolutely the position of the three parties in government and, I presume, the position of all parties in this House that housing targets and housing output will need to increase. I am very clear in relation to that. I do not need any commission to tell me that. I do not need any report to tell me that. I do not need any member of the Opposition to tell me that. It is the position of the Government that housing targets will increase, and that work is well under way. It is under way with two inputs: the 2022 census and independent peer-reviewed research from the ESRI. There is a timeline in relation to that. We will see the draft national planning framework published next month. That will go out to consultation, with the finalised version published later this year. That will set revised targets for the second half of this decade. I am publicly on record as saying that I believe the scale of the new housing we need to build between 2025 and 2030 is in the region of 250,000, which averages at around 50,000. I believe the Housing Commission, based on a leaked report, says the figure is around 56,000. There is a landing zone that I think recognises the need to catch up on a lost decade of investment.

It is not self-congratulatory to say progress has been made. When the Deputy's party joined my party in government in 2011, which was the height of the financial crash, there were less than 7,000 homes built in Ireland that year. We now have a situation where almost 33,000 homes were built in Ireland last year because we have made progress in rebuilding a sector that was absolutely decimated. Now we need to lift the scale of that ambition to give people hope, to get people out of the boxroom and to make sure that all of our housing supply numbers, our homeownership numbers and the number of people drawing down their mortgages all start to increase and go in the right direction.

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