James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The planning permission data released by the CSO last week is concerning. It can be seen within the data that the overall dip is driven mainly by a fall in the permissions for apartments.

This illustrates the enormous challenge of meeting our revised housing targets, the critical role of apartment delivery in this regard, and the importance of securing private capital investment to fund this delivery at the levels needed over the next decade and beyond. Government is committed to meeting this challenge and is taking a twin-track approach with a mix of pragmatic short-term and strategic long-term actions to help build on the recent significant uplift in delivery and sustain this into the future.

Government is already examining actions to scale-up delivery in the immediate term, pending completion of a new all-of-government national housing plan committed to in the programme for Government. To this end, we are actioning priority commitments in the programme for Government with the potential to make an immediate impact, such as establishing a new strategic housing activation office.

While supporting longer-term delivery, such measures will also help maximise the impact of measures already introduced to strengthen the housing supply pipeline, including the development levy waiver and water connection rebate, which seek, inter alia, to activate the large number of planning permissions already in the system and address viability issues in relation to apartment delivery.

Further proposals for measures to help scale-up delivery to 300,000 new homes by the end of 2030 will be considered in the context of the new plan.

See this speech in context