Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. We all agree that housing is the most important issue. There is a housing emergency in this country. There is an onus on all of us to come forward with ideas and policies to try to make real and meaningful progress for people in the country. I hope we are at least united on this.

This Government has taken a number of steps on housing since coming to office only months ago, including publishing an implementation plan for the Planning and Development Act 2024, publishing draft legislation about short-term letting and the regulation of that sector, bringing forward proposals regarding exempted development and making it easier for people who want to construct developments, particularly on their own land and in their own gardens, and indeed having a new housing plan by the summer recess. The Cabinet committee on housing will meet about that issue today. We have also published the new national planning framework, which was before this House this week and indeed the other House. It is key to ensuring that we have enough zoned land across our country to build homes.

We all know that when it comes to the building of homes for our people and getting people out of box rooms, one of the key barriers that people find with regard to construction is silos, where there is a site but there might not be a water connection or a wastewater connection, there might be an ESB challenge or there might be another blockage. When the previous Government set up the Housing Commission, it recognised this issue and called for structures to be put in place. It talked about a housing delivery oversight executive office to bring in expertise and people from different utility companies to ask how we are going to unblock a site and build more quickly. The Deputy is in favour of that idea, which is why I am surprised at his opposition to the idea of setting up this office. Page 98 of the Sinn Féin housing plan does not talk about jobshares or anything else but about setting up a housing delivery oversight executive to bring forward exactly what we now want to do too. Sinn Féín talks about bringing it forward on a statutory basis, ultimately, which I am happy to talk to Deputy Doherty about, but it talks about setting it up in the first instance-----

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