Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

Nothing like that has happened at all. The Government has established a housing activation office. We would be delighted to constructively engage with the Deputy and all of the Opposition in terms of how this office can work effectively. We have all seen the need to break down silos, second people and bring in expertise. We should not be referring to people outside the House by their surnames and calling people tsars and all that sort of stuff. There are no such plans to create any tsar. There are plans to create offices, which will have to be staffed and populated. The Government will decide in due course, as we tease this through, how best to do that. All of this has to be about building more homes. The success or otherwise of the next five years will be in how we make progress in building more homes for more people in our country.

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