Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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13. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on housing will next meet. [1397/24]

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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14. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on housing will meet next. [1811/24]

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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15. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on housing will meet next. [2747/24]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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16. To ask the Taoiseach to provide an update on Housing for All. [2795/24]

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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17. To ask the Taoiseach to provide an update on Housing for All. [2798/24]

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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18. To ask the Taoiseach to provide an update on Housing for All. [2803/24]

Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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19. To ask the Taoiseach to provide an update on Housing for All. [3711/24]

Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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20. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on housing will next meet. [3804/24]

Aindrias Moynihan (Cork North West, Fianna Fail)
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21. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on housing will next meet. [3807/24]

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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22. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on housing will next meet. [3974/24]

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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23. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on housing will next meet. [4016/24]

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 13 to 23, inclusive, together.

The Cabinet committee on housing met yesterday. The committee works to ensure a co-ordinated approach to the implementation of Housing for All and programme for Government commitments regarding housing and related matters. Our latest update on progress achieved under Housing for All was published last Thursday. Despite considerable challenges in the external environment, we are making real progress with new homes and apartments being built all over the country.

Last week, data released by the CSO confirmed that more houses were built last year than in any year since 2008. That is a 15-year high. With more than 32,000 new homes, our target for 2023 has been exceeded. We are confident that this strong momentum will continue, with building under way on almost 33,000 new homes last year, which is up 20% on the previous year. Planning permission data also indicates a strong pipeline, with permission granted for more than 37,600 new homes in the year to the end of September 2023.

Affordability initiatives are having a real impact in helping people to achieve home ownership, with more than 500 first-time buyers or couples drawing down their mortgage each week. This is the highest since 2007.

Almost 2,500 couples and individuals availed of the first home scheme in 2023, while in the 11 months to the end of November 2003, almost 7,000 claimed the help-to-buy scheme to assist with the deposit needed to purchase or build a new home. These schemes will assist thousands more to buy this year.

We are also seeing the benefit of recent measures to bring vacant and derelict homes back into use, with just over 3,000 applications approved for the vacant property refurbishment grant. On State lands, building started on a number of sites during the final months of 2023. This includes almost 2,000 new homes in the Dublin City Council area and over 200 new social and affordable homes at the former Devoy Barracks in Naas. We are also committed to improving the rental market by providing greater security, affordability and viability to tenants and landlords into the future. In addition to the increased rent tax credit, recent measures to bring about more homes to rent include further reform of the fair deal scheme and the Government's new policy to develop more on-campus student accommodation.

Housing for All is working. We are building more homes and we need to press ahead with implementation and maintain this strong momentum into 2024 and beyond.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Taoiseach for his extended reply. I acknowledge the work that has been done and agree that considerable progress has been made, and is being made, in respect of the provision of houses to the community despite the Covid-19 pandemic and all the other obstacles that were in the way. It is easy to say this is not enough. Of course, it is not enough but, at the same time, a considerable amount has been achieved in very difficult circumstances.

One thing that has recently come to my attention and that of everyone else, including the Minister, is the intervention of investment funds in the market. They have been buying up houses on the basis that they are to be let. Of course, to a large extent they control the market because they are letting houses to people at exorbitant rents. That is not getting any easier as time goes by. These funds are letting properties to people who have no other options. These are people who do not qualify for local authority housing because their income is too high and who do not qualify for any other form of assistance. They cannot qualify for a loan from a bank or local authority because their income is not high enough. I ask that a particular look be taken at those sets of circumstances with a view to eliminating any repressive or regressive moves that seem to militate against the people who are attempting to provide themselves with a home.

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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I commend the Government on its leadership. We are making significant strides in respect of housing. All the key housing indicators, including commencements, completions and planning permission applications, are trending upwards, which bodes well for the future. Momentum is certainly strong and building. We are moving in the right direction when it comes to housing. The Department of housing has confirmed that 525 homes were built in Mayo last year, which was the highest number since 2008. More than 3,000 homes have been provided in Mayo since the launch of Rebuilding Ireland in mid-2016.

I must, however, acknowledge that not a single affordable home has been built in Mayo since the adoption of the Housing for All plan. While social housing is extremely important, there should be a mix of social and affordable housing for those who are seeking home ownership. I previously raised the issue with the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, and was informed that the Department is working to set specific targets for local authorities that are outside the set targets at present. I am asking for clarification in relation to where these targets are at and when they will be published because we need to set realistic targets. I said previously that 100 affordable homes in Mayo for the next 12 months is a realistic target that should be achieved. We should be ambitious in that regard.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The fact is that the market is proving incapable of delivering affordability for houses to buy or rent for large swathes of young and working people. That is the reality. There has been an uptick in the delivery of social housing. It has not been enough but we are beginning to see some progress, not least because the Government adopted a proposal we suggested, which was to start buying some of the houses delivered by the market that are too expensive for people to buy and having the Government deliver them as social housing. As one of the Government Deputies has just told the Taoiseach, we are way behind on affordable housing. In my area, zero cost-rental or affordable houses were delivered last year. Under our planning laws, we get 10% social and 10% affordable housing as part of some schemes. What does that mean? It means that 80% of what the market is delivering is unaffordable to the vast majority. I honestly and genuinely ask what is the point in building unaffordable housing because the only people who can buy it are very rich people or investment funds, which buy the houses and charge extortionate rents. We must do something about this urgently. If the Government is serious about looking for ideas, and I acknowledge it has taken on some of the suggestions we have made in certain regards, I ask that we have a serious discussion whereby the Government listens to some our suggestions about how we can deliver more. We should be following what is being done in places such as Vienna where the policy is that between 50% and 60% of all housing delivered must be social or affordable housing. What is the point otherwise?

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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The housing crisis is still getting worse. Every week, I meet couples who are working, whose combined income puts them over the limit for social housing and who are simply unable to afford a home in the market. They are spending all their money, week to week, on their rent and cannot save up a deposit. Such people are utterly trapped. The market has failed those people. The Taoiseach talked about affordable housing. Let us take the example of cost rental. In my constituency, we now have some cost-rental homes. However, affordability is defined by the Government not in relation to how much income people have and whether they can afford it but as a percentage reduction to an utterly unaffordable market rate. The Taoiseach claims that going 25% below the market rate is somehow affordable but it is still unaffordable. I will give the example of a new development in Citywest. Under cost rental, the price is €1,390 for a one-bedroom home, €1,580 for a two-bedroom home and €1,750 for a three-bedroom home. It is still unaffordable for enormous numbers of workers. We are talking about a couple with a net income of €66,000 or less. If they are at the highest rate of €66,000, 31% of their income is going on housing for a three-bed home. If they earn less, that percentage rises quickly to 40% or 50%. These are not affordable just by virtue of the Government stating they cost slightly less than a massively unaffordable level. Does the Taoiseach accept the point that the cost is not affordable? We need properly affordable homes, which means, for one thing, getting rid of the limits for social housing and allowing anybody to apply for it.

Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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Vacancy and dereliction are a curse across our cities, towns and villages. A study by the Revenue Commissioners two years ago put the number of vacant buildings at more than 57,000. There is plenty of potential for housing there. One of those buildings was probably the old Central Hotel in Mallow, County Cork. The building has been put onto the derelict sites register. It will have been vacant and derelict for 17 years this year. It could be used for affordable apartments or community facilities for young people, for shops, or for a combination of the three. We need to use it or lose it. Will the Taoiseach agree that local authorities, such as Cork County Council, need to be far more assertive in using their powers for compulsory purchase?

Pádraig O'Sullivan (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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I wish to raise the issue of a social housing passport. I think Deputy Devlin raised this issue in the past. We are living in a society that is much more complex that the one in which we grew up. Many marriages and relationships break down and of the many couples who have shared an application on a local authority housing list, one or both partners might end up going back to their county of origin and it is quite difficult to get people transferred between different local authorities. If a system were in place that could cover the entire country to allow for the easier transition of people to their home county so they could keep their time on the social housing list and not have to start from scratch with their social housing application, it would be worth looking into. I would appreciate it if the Taoiseach could raise that with the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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We are talking about the current housing crisis that is affecting so many people across the country but I am still working with a large number of individuals who are hammered due to the last housing crash. Believe it or not, these individuals are still before the courts trying to unwind the complex legal mess that exists with regard to the housing crash in 2009. The banks are still pursuing these families and many of these individuals are broken people. These people have been suffering for 14 or 15 years. Some have suffered from depression while many have attempted suicide to relieve themselves from a crisis in which they still find themselves. Many people are financially busted and are defending themselves in court against some of the biggest legal firms in Dublin. They are finding it increasingly difficult. One of the allegations that is being made is that the Land Registry is transferring land out of individuals' names and into the names of other people at the request of banks' solicitors - not at the request of judges, etc. Surely the Land Registry should operate only on the basis of a judgment and not on the say of a private firm representing a bank. At this stage, it should be the responsibility of the State to look at those individuals who are still in this sorry mess 14 years later and see what can be done to fix their situations so that they do not have to go through another ten to 15 years of this disaster with the banks.

Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael)
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Deputy Durkan raised the issue of institutional investors. The Government recognises the need for protections to prevent institutional investors displacing owner occupiers. For this reason, we introduced tax and planning changes to protect traditional family houses from bulk purchase. These include changes introduced in May 2021 to the rate of stamp duty on bulk purchases. A 10% stamp duty levy was introduced by Government for the cumulative purchase of ten or more residential houses in a 12-month period. Section 28 guidelines for planning authorities provide for an owner occupier guarantee preventing multiple units being sold to a single buyer in new estates, although, of course, this does not apply retrospectively to permissions granted before 2021. About 40,000 homes have received planning permission with conditions attached prohibiting bulk purchase or multiple sale to a single purchaser since that law was brought in and we are considering further measures. We believe the role of institutional investors is to finance new housing developments that otherwise would not be built, not to buy up existing ones when people have a legitimate expectation that they may be able to buy them themselves.

Deputy Dillon raised the issue of affordable housing schemes in Mayo. I agree that we need a mix of affordable housing schemes and social housing schemes. It should not just be social housing. The argument made in the past was that counties where affordability is better than others do not need these schemes. I do not agree with that view. I think every county should have at least one scheme but I would also point out that there are ways other than affordable housing schemes to achieve affordability. Help to buy does it by helping people to afford a deposit and the first home scheme can close the gap between what somebody gets in terms of mortgage approval and the cost of building a new home.

There are lots of ways we can achieve affordability. Social housing is clearly one way. As I said before, it benefits everyone. It takes people off the housing list, frees up properties for other people to rent and has a downward dampening effect on house prices. That is why we are building more social housing now than at any point since the 1970s. The Deputy may be interested to know that if we compare the 2022 census with the census ten years ago, we find that there are 40,000 more families on social housing than was the case back in 2011 and the percentage of people living in social housing is now higher than it was ten years ago. That shows how committed this Government and previous Governments in the past ten years have been to social housing.

We are also trying to reduce the cost of building homes by waiving development levies, servicing more land, reducing the cost of finance and focusing on vacancy and help to buy. Let us never forget what help to buy is. This is tax that people have already paid. It is their own tax they are getting back and they can put it towards their deposit. It would be terrible if that was taken away.

Regarding the Vienna model, Vienna is a great city. I have been there many times and I love the place but there are merits and demerits to its housing model. One of the things people in Vienna tell me is that because there is such a focus on public housing, it is very hard to own your own home in Vienna. Home ownership rates in Austria are among the lowest in Europe and are lower than they are in Ireland. I am not sure if that is the model people want in Ireland, one where people are less likely to own their own home and are in public housing for life no matter how good and secure it may be.

I think we all appreciate that there will always be some level of vacancy but there is still too much of it. It is still too common even though vacancy rates are falling. I agree with Deputy Barry that local authorities need to be more assertive and proactive in what they do regarding vacancy. Some are better than others. Waterford is a very good example of a local authority that is particularly active when it comes to vacancy and other local authorities could learn from that. The Government is adopting a carrot-and-stick approach. A figure of €150 million is available to local authorities to purchase derelict properties and bring them back into use. They can buy the property, sell it on and use the money again to buy another property. I am really encouraging local authorities to do that. They have compulsory purchase order powers that are not used enough. There is the derelict site levy, which they are often too slow to impose, and there is the vacant property tax. Grants are now available to individuals to renovate properties and bring them back into use. Over 3,000 of those have been approved and the drawdown is picking up.

Deputy Pádraig O'Sullivan raised the issue of a social housing passport. I will have to come back to him on that issue. It is a good idea, particularly where people are moving back to their own county, that they would carry their years with them. One thing we would need to guard against is people being on multiple lists because it could create all sorts of difficulties if people are on housing lists in several different local authorities.

I do not have any information for Deputy Tóibín regarding the issue he raised concerning the Land Registry. There are, however, lots of options available to people who are still in financial distress from the crash 12 or 13 years ago. Mortgage to rent is one option while personal insolvency is another option. I would say to anyone to get good legal and financial advice on their options.

The Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, made a statement on the housing adaptation grant earlier in the Dáil today. That is probably a more up-to-date response than I can give.