Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

Deputy Bacik did say that. She said that we had no social housing plans. The housing plan states that we will deliver 12,000 new social homes every year over the lifetime of the plan. We have significantly transformed the scale and pace of social housing delivery over the past five years. That has to be acknowledged. I have looked at the Labour Party's manifesto on housing. It is so vague as to be unbelievable. It is bereft of any depth or substance. The Labour Party has put no flesh on the bone of any of its proposals.

The housing plan has depth and substance. We have capitalised the Land Development Agency to about €8.75 billion. We are talking about a €50 billion plan for housing. In terms of the need for 50,000 houses a year, we will need about €20 billion to be spent every year. The State will not to be able to spend €20 billion every year. The private sector has to be involved. The Labour Party has consistently been hostile to any private sector dimension to housing.

We say that the State will continue to allocate enormous sums to housing and to infrastructure that will enable housing, such as water services and the national grid. That is the fundamental big picture about housing.

The Deputy wants to get back down to apartment guidelines. We wanted to close the viability gap. We need more apartments built. We reduced the VAT on apartments in the budget. The Labour Party lazily and politically described it as a pro-developer measure. That is not the reason.

It is to narrow the viability gap that all the analysts have identified in terms of apartment building in cities. We have done a number of other measures in terms of the reform of rent pressure zones. The Deputy opposed that too, of course, because she just wants to be popular all the time. We are focused since we came into government on doing things around housing to reform the rental market. That is in line with the Housing Commission report, by the way, which called for reform of the rental market. We followed through on that in an evidence-based and informed way in terms of those who made recommendations to the Minister to come forward with proposals for the rental sector. I get the sense all the time that no matter what Government proposes, the Deputy will oppose it. We need different housing types and apartment types for different cohorts of the population who require accommodation and housing.

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