Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

I always think phrases such as "donning hard hats" are a bit pejorative. People put on hard hats when they visit building sites because of health and safety. It is the law of the land. Ministers go out and about to meet people who build homes. I am proud to do that and to listen directly to the people who build homes, including at the LDA site I visited with the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, the Minister, Deputy Browne, and the Taoiseach this morning, where more than 500 homes are being built, which will come on stream in 2027. It is a real partnership between Dublin City Council, a developer and the LDA, making a real difference. We will not be prisoners of ideology. We will work in every pragmatic way we can to increase the amount of housing and, as a practical example of that, I will always wear a hard hat on a building site.

The Deputy said it was the fourth housing plan. Of course, it is because the housing plan needs to be replaced every few years. It has a deadline. He also suggested that Fine Gael and Fine Gael alone wrote the last four housing plans. Fine Gael has been in government during that time with Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party, the Green Party and Independents. Many political parties in this House have had an opportunity during that period to feed in their constructive suggestions to the housing plan and this is the latest instalment. On the one hand the Deputy criticised us for having an fourth housing plan while on the other he said it was delayed.

I am genuinely intrigued by the Deputy's political position on tax. Perhaps it is his view that tax should not be used as a viability measure in housing. I disagree but it is a legitimate political view to have. Perhaps he believes that when we look at the ledger we should only use the spending side. We in the Government do not. We believe we should use the spending side to invest massive amounts of the people's money in building infrastructure, whether it be for water, wastewater, electricity or the transport projects that are needed in all our constituencies to open up sites, and directly in housing, including social housing that is being built at record levels. However, we also believe we should use the tax side to reduce the cost of building and there have been encouraging signs since we made that change only a few weeks ago in the reaction of the market.

I value the market. It has an important role to play in the delivery of an increasing supply and I am encouraged by what I heard from those responsible for building apartments; that the decision we took, which we voted for and the Social Democrats voted against, will make a real difference in reducing the cost of building an apartment. If we are to reach or exceed 300,000 units we need a lot more apartments to be built. I am also encouraged by the fact that while we have a long way to go, we have seen the highest completion figure for apartments this year so far between the first quarter and third quarter, in any time since 2011 when my party first came into government in the midst of a financial crisis.

On targets, let me clear. All the data points will continue to be published.

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