Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail)

The bottom line is the population is growing exponentially and has grown. The pressures are enormous. We need to build at scale and at pace. The housing plan has substance in it in terms of proposals to do that. We did not wait for it. We decided straight in to do, for example, the national planning framework to get more land zoned for housing. Deputy Cairns will have problems with that on the ground and no doubt her people will oppose it where there is extra zoning and so on.

In terms of apartments, we are not standing still and just looking at a problem. We come up with proposals and ideas but people from the Opposition will get into the courts and try to stem those. The apartment guidelines are one strand among a series of measures we are taking to get to the volume needed. We have moved. When the Government came in in 2020, only 20,000 houses were being built per year; now it is 30,000-odd but it needs to get to 50,000. That will need a combination of public investment at unprecedented levels, which is provided for in the national development plan and in our budget, and significant private sector finance. The only thing the Deputy has come up with is a savings and investment scheme. That is fine; in a couple of years' time that might be useful. It will not do anything now in terms of funding investment of houses.

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