Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context

49. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform whether the Government has adequately considered the growing problem of labour and skills shortages in multiple sectors of the society and economy, including construction, healthcare, education, childcare and more, in the context of the National Development Plan; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17862/24]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context

54. To ask the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform if he is aware of the issues raised by the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, in respect of the national development plan (details supplied), particularly in terms of capacity and resource constraints to deliver public housing, elder-care facilities and childcare and increase the number of hospital beds; his plans to address these issues; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [17863/24]

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context

These questions follow on from our earlier discussion and relate to what the Government is doing to build up our labour and skills capacity to deliver housing, in particular, but also some of the other key infrastructure we need. My point, given the Minister said he did not understand it, is not that everything the private sector does is wrong but that it simply does not have the capacity and, therefore, the State has to build up its own capacity.

However, there is little sign that the State understands that and is pursuing it with rigour.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context

I propose to take Questions Nos. 49 and 54 together.

What does the Deputy mean by "capacity"? Does he mean numbers of people? Does he mean bricklayers, carpenters and plumbers?

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Yes.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Regardless of whether the State or the private sector was seeking to hire them, they were not available in the quantity we needed in recent years. That is the key point I am making to the Deputy. If they were not there to be hired, changing the nature of the employer would not have made any difference.

What we are doing to build up capacity involves the steps that were taken by the then Minister and now Taoiseach, Deputy Harris, and are now being continued by the Minister, Deputy O’Donovan, in respect of apprenticeships and encouraging more people into the construction sector, showing them that it is something they can have a career in, and giving them the training and support they need to be provided with good jobs over longer working lives. These are the steps that are being taken from a human capital point of view.

Other steps that the Government has taken to try to build up general capacity in the economy include the changes we made to the public spending code, whereby we moved from a code that could at times be rigid to infrastructural guidelines, thereby allowing individual Departments more responsibility so that the money we allocate to them can more quickly turn into the delivery of projects. We have made changes to the capital works management framework in order to rebalance risk within the public works contract and further incentivise SMEs to become involved in the delivery of important public sector projects. We have made changes to how we oversee the implementation of the national development plan, whereby Ministers must bring forward updates on their capital spending and bring forward an overall statement to the Cabinet every quarter to update it on what we are doing to deliver the NDP on top of the large increases in capital expenditure that I outlined to Deputy Conway-Walsh.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context

We are dealing with a housing emergency. Most people recognise that. I hope the Government does. We need to dramatically increase the amount of housing we build, in particular social and affordable housing. Recently, Goodbody Stockbrokers produced a report showing that there are only five builders in this country capable of building more than 500 houses per year while the majority of the rest – 473 or so small contractors – can only build an approximate average of 34 houses per year each. The capacity is not there, and it is not going to be provided by those small builders.

How do we get young people, people who have come to this country and are now languishing in direct provision and people who have finished their apprenticeships but are leaving to go to Canada, Australia or wherever to go into construction? The State should go into the sector and make it attractive for them to move into construction. The State should ramp up apprenticeships and, unlike in previous construction booms or upswings, we should send the message that if people go into construction, they will not be landed on the dole at the next collapse because it has all been left up to the private market, but that there will instead be sustainable, secure and decent employment that the State will guarantee.

Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context

We can allow an extra supplementary question because these questions are grouped.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context

That is exactly what the Government is doing. How are we going to get more companies involved in the building of homes if Deputies like Deputy Boyd Barrett always take the view that any private sector company getting involved in the delivery of building a new home is suspicious? The Deputy sees it like that. On the one hand, he is lamenting that we do not have larger companies involved in the delivery of building more homes, but at the same time, he is the very first Deputy to be critical – at times, highly critical – of the private sector in the delivery of those homes. He cannot have it both ways. He cannot ride both horses at the same time.

What we are seeing happen, through our local authorities and approved housing bodies, is the State building more and more homes directly. The Deputy should not come in wringing his hands at me and saying that the private sector should be building more and we should have bigger builders while also being continually suspicious and critical of the private sector in its role delivering more homes.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context

No, I am not suspicious. I can just see the facts for myself, as can everyone else, including the builders. Even they are saying this. We cannot deliver the necessary housing. Cairn Homes has said it. Goodbody Stockbrokers have said it. Builders do not have the capacity. By the way, they are not in the business of producing subsidised housing. They do not do that. What they are delivering is unaffordable, but let them away. We need social and affordable housing and the State has to have the capacity to do that, since private developers are not going to do it.

We used to have tradespeople in our local authority, but it has run them down, as have local authorities all over the country. Why are apprentices and tradespeople not being recruited into local authorities? At a time when we are facing a housing emergency, why would we not ramp that up so that we could have the State construction capacity to supplement the market failure we are seeing and compensate for the incapacity of the private sector to deliver on the scale we need?

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context

This politics is performative for the Deputy. He knows our local authorities are building more homes. He knows more money is going into the local authorities to do this. He knows our delivery of social housing is increasing year after year. He is aware of the efforts being made, including in apprenticeship programmes, to make construction a more attractive career for people to go into. The Deputy knows all of this. I find it extraordinary that a man who does not have a good word to say about the operation of economies is quoting a stockbroking report in the way he is and wringing his hands that the private sector cannot do more when he is always critical and excoriating of the role of the private sector in the delivery of homes.

I will revert to what I said at the start of our exchange. We need two things. We are in the middle of such need and such challenge in the delivery of more homes that we require the private sector to do more. Where market failure is occurring, and even where it is not occurring, we need a strong State that is delivering more homes to fulfil our commitments to citizens who need social housing. That is happening. The figures that will be published by the Government tomorrow will indicate the progress that we are making this year alone in delivering that.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context

The Minister stated that local authorities are delivering more housing. No, they are not. They are not building anything at all. They are commissioning private construction. I accept that is better than doing nothing when we do not have the capacity, but they are not actually building anything themselves, given that the State does not have any capacity.

I wish the Minister would not mischaracterise me, as what I am arguing is that this is not enough. The Minister can play politics if he wants, but I am saying that it is not enough and that the housing crisis is the largest example - a catastrophic one - of market failure. That is not a criticism of these people - I could do that on another day - but a clear statement of fact. They are not going to do it. They do not have the capacity and it is not their business to produce not-for-profit low-cost housing. That is not what they do. We need to build up our own capacity. That means direct capacity, with the State having its own ability to build things.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context

We are clutching at straws here. The Deputy is acknowledging that local authorities are building more homes.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context

No. I said they were not building.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context

Is the Deputy acknowledging that local-----

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context

They contract people to do it.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context

I have tonnes of social houses in my constituency. They are run by Dublin City Council. It might matter to the Deputy whether the private sector is recruited by a local authority-----

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context

I just said it was better than nothing.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context

It might matter to the Deputy, but what about the person who is going into that home? We are trying to have a debate and I am giving the Deputy facts with which he is clearly uncomfortable. He does not like when I challenge the ideologies that he wraps around housing.

If the local authority is using private plumbers and bricklayers and small to medium-sized construction companies to deliver more local houses, it does not matter to the person who is moving into one of those houses as to who built it. I can see that with the progress that has been made on the northside of Dublin alone. I can see the progress that is on the way.

As for the Deputy's idea that the State should build capacity to do what we are talking about, I must inform him that this is the kind of project it would take years to complete and that would have local authorities all competing against each other. Our local authorities are building more homes, and we need to continue to support them in doing that.