Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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11. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [8206/24]

Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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12. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [13014/24]

Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)
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13. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [13016/24]

Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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14. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [13984/24]

Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail)
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15. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [14092/24]

Brendan Smith (Cavan-Monaghan, Fianna Fail)
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16. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [14157/24]

Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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17. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [15165/24]

Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance)
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18. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [15186/24]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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19. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [15144/24]

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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20. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [15147/24]

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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21. To ask the Taoiseach when the Cabinet committee on the economy and investment will next meet. [16761/24]

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 11 to 21, inclusive, together.

The Cabinet committee on the economy and investment was re-established by the Government on 10 April and its next meeting will be scheduled for the coming weeks. The committee last met on 15 February of this year. It comprises the Taoiseach; the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and for Defence and the Ministers for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Transport, Finance, Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, Enterprise, Trade and Employment and Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and the Media. Other Ministers and Ministers of State are invited to participate as required or where the agenda is relevant to their departmental responsibilities.

The committee oversees the implementation of programme for Government commitments aimed at sustainable economic recovery, investment and job creation, including Harnessing Digital, which is Ireland's national digital strategy.

Despite many external challenges, I am pleased we continue to live in a country that is seeing a very strong economic performance, with more people at work than ever before, female participation in the workforce close to an all-time high and very low levels of unemployment. Thankfully, inflation continues to fall, while households and businesses have been supported, quite rightly, through a range of cost-of-living measures.

Our economic model continues to be founded on a well-established and successful pro-enterprise policy framework, providing a stable and sustainable regulatory and tax environment, sound management of the public finances, and significant investment in the infrastructure and skills required to ensure our future competitiveness.

As with all policy areas, economic issues are regularly discussed at full Government meetings, not just at Cabinet committee meetings. Of course, all formal decisions on our economy and, indeed, all formal decisions of the Government are made at full Cabinet meetings.

Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity)
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We are told that we are living in the bright, shiny Ireland of the 2020s. Turn on many a tap in Cork city today and you might think that you had been transported back to the 1920s. Why? It is because of what is coming out of those taps. It is brown water, orange water, dirty and discoloured with sediment from the inside of water pipes that are more than 100 years old in some cases. I would reckon myself that a majority of people in Cork city now do not trust their water supply. This problem is not new. It has been going on for two years. Up until yesterday, the Tánaiste had made no criticism of Uisce Éireann. It was like he was auditioning for a role as the quiet man. Yesterday, even he felt compelled to speak out. Here is the thing, Taoiseach. Clean, safe water is a human right and the Government cannot just pass the buck to Uisce Éireann. When will the Government do something real about this?

Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
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I would also offer to Deputy Barry that manganese seems to be an issue with water discolouration. Louth County Council and Irish Water have done much work on pilot schemes. Some of my follow-up questions for Uisce Éireann relate specifically to that.

House prices and rents are at record highs. There is a rising market. Analysts are now saying that the rate of house price inflation is set to accelerate even further. This is forcing an entire generation of young people to emigrate. Meanwhile, Government has missed all of its affordable housing targets for the fourth year in a row. Moreover, many of these homes are not affordable. I will talk about Cois Farraige, Blackrock, just outside Dundalk, which is Louth County Council's first scheme in years. A price of €305,000 is certainly not affordable for many people. Only five out of ten offerings were taken up. There were at least 26 applications but most of them did not reach criteria. Louth County Council itself stated there is an issue with the criteria. Can we look at the criteria, the costs and the targets relating to affordable housing? It is not working at this point in time.

Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South West, Fianna Fail)
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When we talk about the economy, we have to talk about the value of big sporting occasions and events to the Irish economy, especially in the regional and peripheral areas. It was sad to learn over the past couple of days that Ireland's bid to host the World Rally Championship is in jeopardy. Is there anything the Taoiseach can do in his high office to intervene and try to save this? I understand the hands of the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, are tied in that he has been told he has to get advice about the economic value but I can tell the Taoiseach this from my own perspective. I am from Clonakilty, where we host the West Cork Rally. It is a much smaller rally but the economic value and buzz that the event brings to my region is incredible. It is not just the crowds, the people or atmosphere but every hotel, restaurant and café is full from Cork to Bantry. The economic spend is phenomenal. It would be a great shame if we missed out on this opportunity. There is a vibrant rally community here in Ireland. Irish rally is on the crest of a wave with William Creighton winning the Junior World Rally Championship. We need to build on that momentum and try to do our best to ensure that this event goes ahead.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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The National Youth Council of Ireland, NYCI ,report suggests that half of young people are very unhappy with their housing situation and more than half feel their mental health is seriously being affected by this issue. They have good reason to feel that way. I will give two examples. This week, I met a family who are being evicted. They are a working family who got a notice to quit on grounds of sale. They are in receipt of the HAP now but they are being evicted. If they are made homeless and put into emergency accommodation, they will not be entitled to HAP because they are over the threshold. If you are on HAP, your income can go up because you are working and your rent increases a bit. It is the same in social housing. If you are made homeless because you are over the threshold, when you need the help most, you are told you cannot have any of it and are not entitled to social housing either, so you are trapped in social housing. It is crazy.

I know another working mother who, for similar reasons, has been in emergency accommodation for four years with her son, in one-bedroom accommodation. Those sorts of anomalies have to be addressed because working people who have done nothing wrong are now getting trapped because they are a bit over certain thresholds in a hopeless situation. They are homeless and have no chance. Incidentally, the only accommodation available to them is €3,000 a month. Their combined income after tax is €48,000, so to pay the rent that is being charged in the area without HAP support, they would be paying 75% of their income on the rents that are available.

Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE)
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The Taoiseach told his Ard-Fheis that he would move mountains to get the children out of the box room and into a home of their own. We know what the consequences for the children are of being in the box room. The NYCI report talks about over half of young people having low mental well-being, precisely because they are stuck in the box room with no prospect of having a home or space to themselves. We know why we have got to this point. In essence, it is because we have had housing policy driven by a perverse version of trickle-down economics. It is the idea of giving money and incentives to developers and big landlords and hoping that will get the market moving and get housing going. It has not worked up until this point and the housing crisis has got worse and worse.

The indications of Deputy Harris's reign as Taoiseach marking any sort of turning of the page on that are not good. One of the first decisions it seems the Taoiseach has made, and he might confirm it, has been to extend the waiver of development levies. He might say how much that is going to cost the State. Originally one year, so I presume also another year, was going to cost in excess of €300 million. That is €300 million which could be public money, which could be sitting in local authorities and used to build housing. Instead, it is being left in the pockets of big developers. This is not the way to address the housing crisis. This is the way that has been tried and failed over and over again. Instead of giving public money to private developers, we need to actually build and retrofit homes on a significant scale.

Rose Conway-Walsh (Mayo, Sinn Fein)
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One of the biggest economic and social scandals this country has seen is the defective blocks scandal. Last night, hundreds of homeowners in Mayo gathered at the Great National Hotel in Ballina to tell us how the defective blocks scheme is not working for them. The anguish of trying to access this scheme that is clearly not fit for purpose was palpable. The buck now stops with the Taoiseach. They are looking to the Taoiseach, as Head of Government, to end the nightmare because the Minister and his Department officials are just not listening. He is certainly not hearing what I and my Sinn Féin colleagues have been telling him for months now, or indeed for years in the case of some of us.

Their question to the Taoiseach is as follows. Since 2013, homeowners in Mayo have been campaigning to deliver a fit-for-purpose scheme that would deliver 100% financial redress and 100% support to enable homeowners to rebuild their homes. Does the Taoiseach commit to putting forward the necessary changes to deliver a resolution to the priority issues in the document that I have now given to him? Does the Taoiseach see the issue that his housing Minister is failing to see? Otherwise, as Gina, one of the homeowners, rightly asked last night, what are we meant to do?

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Deputies for the wide range of issues. First, I assure Deputy Barry that the Tánaiste is anything but a quiet man. I have no doubt but that he will give the issue of the water supply and what the Deputy states is a lack of public trust in the water supply his absolute attention. I certainly will follow the matter up with both Uisce Éireann and the Minister for housing. I am happy to come back to Deputy Barry on that issue.

In response to Deputy Ó Murchú, I am clear that there is much more we need to do when it comes to housing but in saying that, I am also very clear there are other important things to say too. We are now building social housing at a rate and pace that we have not seen in this country since the 1970s. In my lifetime, we have never been building social housing at the scale we now are. We have more to do. We need to revise our targets. I have certainly outlined my own view on the level of ambition I think we need to get to between 2025 and 2030. We need to deliver between now and the end of the decade.

We have a way to go on affordable housing but we can now point to positive and significant increases year on year. I remember when my party came to government for the first time in this cycle in 2011, there were fewer than 7,000 homes built in Ireland that year. Last year, more than 30,000 homes were built and this year, I believe we are on track to break our targets again in terms of exceeding delivery. We will continue, no doubt, to debate housing, quite rightly as we should, and how we best deliver it for our people. When we take the politics out of it I know that is what everybody in the House does want to do.

Deputy Christopher O'Sullivan spoke about the World Rally Championship. I have a note on this but it is in my office and I do not have it with me. I am very well aware of the work the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, and the Minister, Deputy Catherine Martin, have been doing on this issue. It appears that it may not be a possibility for the next world rally but I am very clear that this is something Ireland is extremely interested in making happen. It is very important there is intensive engagement, as I know there will be and as the Minister of State, Deputy Byrne, and the Minister, Deputy Martin, wish there to be. I am taken by the point Deputy O'Sullivan made about the benefits of such sporting events to regional and rural Ireland and the spin-off benefits that he clearly articulated in terms of small businesses such as cafes and the hospitality sector. I will get a written update on it for the Deputy shortly.

I thank Deputy Boyd Barrett for highlighting the National Youth Council of Ireland's report, which outlines the level of frustration, angst, disappointment and concern young people feel about their housing prospects. On one level, the Government cannot be surprised by it because it is the biggest societal issue faced by young people. What I would say to those young people is they are now back living in a country where, year on year, the number of homes being built is massively increasing, as is the composition and diversity of those homes in terms of social, affordable and private to-purchase homes. There are a number of schemes in place and we have different views on them and that is okay. We have put in place a number of schemes to try to help people get some of their own money back towards a deposit. We certainly intend to keep these schemes in place. I sincerely thank Deputy Boyd Barrett for raising some of the anomalies with regard to the housing assistance payment. He put it quite well. I will take a look at it and speak to the Ministers for housing and social protection on this situation.

To respond to Deputy Paul Murphy, we have not yet taken a formal decision on the waiver. I expect us to take a decision on it very shortly. It has not yet come to government. Deputy Murphy and I have differing views on it and I respect that, but it is my position that I would like to see it continue. I see it as a measure that reduces the cost of building and, therefore, helps to stimulate supply. I hope that the commencement figures which are out later this week, on Thursday I believe, will begin to show the real impact it is having. I do not think it is a case of either-or. We need to provide a whole variety of housing. There are people in my constituency who require and should have social housing. There are people who want an affordable starter home. Many of those kids living in the box rooms have mums and dads who want them to be able to buy a house. I do not think, respectfully, and we will have these debates, that we should ask whether it is social and public or private. It needs to be both.

Deputy Conway-Walsh has just handed the Mayo pyrite families document to me. I will look at it with the Minister for housing and I will revert to her directly.