Séamus McGrath (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

I thank the Minister for facilitating this debate. I do not want to focus on individual issues, initiatives and schemes. I will focus on the big picture in terms of the acute housing crisis we are in. To me the only solution is ramping up supply across all forms, whether new builds, reuse of existing buildings and better utilisation of existing buildings such as over office, over shop and so on. That will help deliver where we need to be in terms of social and affordable housing delivery, cost rental and private purchase, which is sometimes not mentioned when we discuss housing. We have to provide options for individuals and couples to purchase housing as well. In many areas they do not have new builds to purchase, which is a significant issue.

Supply is the only solution when you look at the scale of the problem. As a country we are putting forward more than €6.8 billion per annum in trying to stimulate housing activity. That is a huge amount of money. Should we spend more? Can we spend more? I believe we should. We have to increase that because we are in an acute crisis whether or not you want to use the word "emergency". I would use the word "emergency". We are in a housing emergency, and we have to up that public expenditure. Allied to that we have to significantly increase private investment. I note the comments made earlier, but it is delusional if you do not accept that we have to increase private investment in housing. That has to happen. For that to happen, developments have to become viable. That is the key issue. Many developments are not viable, whether you are talking about apartment building or house building. The reason they are not viable in many cases is because of land costs, servicing costs, lack of infrastructure and so on. We have to address those issues. I am hopeful the national planning framework will improve land availability, and that the national development plan review will increase investment in infrastructure, whether water infrastructure, wastewater, drinking water and energy. We cannot look at housing in isolation. Investment and capital expenditure in infrastructure such as water and energy are absolutely linked to housing and the housing crisis we are in. We have to look at that separately, but we also have to acknowledge the scale of the problem here.

I have just come from the housing committee where we met the Housing Commission. The key point it made is acknowledgement of the scale of the problem. We currently need approximately 50,000 houses per year to meet the demand now, and that is not addressing the deficit and shortfall that have built up over years. To address that we need even more houses delivered. We are a long way off where we need to be, and we have to acknowledge that and treat it as such. We need to bring forward measures in an urgent and radical way to try to address the crisis we are in. That is the key message that has come across today. We need to be radical and treat this as an emergency, and we need to do all in our power to make things happen as soon as possible.

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