Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

First, I want to extend my deepest sympathy to Deputy Sheehan's colleague, Deputy George Lawlor, on the passing of his mum, Betty. I understand he delivered a very heart warming tribute to her yesterday and I join Members across the House in extending my sympathy to him and all of his family at this difficult time.

I thank Deputy Sheehan for raising these issues. I accept that he does not want the plan to fail. I also accept that generally our engagements in relation to housing are constructive. We have different perspectives and different views on occasion but I appreciate that point.

I have to reject or disagree with a number of the assertions the Deputy has made. Yes, the State needs to do more in terms of direct building but there is no way the State is going to build all of the homes that our country requires. I think the Deputy and I can agree on that. There is a target of delivering 300,000 more homes over the lifetime of the plan. Roughly speaking, from memory, around 162,000 of those homes will either be social homes, local authority homes or will be homes that are part-funded through a variety of Government schemes. That is a very significant proportion. In fact, I would argue that this country is investing more Exchequer funding relative to the market than many, if not most, other European countries. Even doing that, I think the Deputy and I will also agree that we are still going to need the private sector to build more homes as well. That is where we are going to get the bulk of delivery. To do that we have to open up sites and listen to those who build homes and the local authorities in terms of the feedback they are getting as well. That is why I reject the assertion that there is nothing in this plan that is going to make a material difference. We are investing hugely in the enabling infrastructure around water and wastewater. We are enabling small developers on small sites to put in their own infrastructure which will help rural and regional communities right across the country.

In relation to the targets, just to be clear on this, the target is very clear. It is 300,000 more homes over the lifetime of the plan. When we were in government with Deputy Sheehan's party, we had a target for the action plan on jobs of 100,000 new jobs. We did not break it down every year, and the Labour Party did not look for that either, but we exceeded the target. We have got to be clear here. I do not accept this idea of arbitrary deadlines, whether something is finished on 31 December or 1 January, or the idea that somebody can sit back and say they have done their bit for this county for this year and will wait until next year. We need a constant pipeline over the lifetime of this plan and we need people hungry to do more. That is why, as the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, and the Minister, Deputy Browne, have made clear, we are putting a fund in place to reward and incentivise local authorities that go above and beyond their so-called target in terms of either social or starter homes.

In relation to children, and child homelessness in particular, we are taking two very significant steps. One is the fund to help get families out of homelessness, with €100 million next year to be ring-fenced. I am being clear that this is going to need to be repeated each year. That needs to really ramp up, to resource and fund our local authorities in a ring-fenced way to help to get children out of homelessness and get a roof over their heads. The second step - and I have heard Focus Ireland and others seek this - is changes to the social housing allocation scheme to prioritise homeless children. That is also in the plan.

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