Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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4. To ask the Minister for Housing, Planning, and Local Government if his attention has been drawn to recent CSO data showing that the number of new homes approved annually fell by over 21% in 2024; his plans to introduce an alternative policy measure to address this; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [12895/25]

Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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In terms of the planning applications, we have seen a significant fall in applications. The figures are down over 21% annually, and apartments even further. What are the Minister's plans to address this? In particular, does it not show that the Minister's housing policy and Housing for All as a policy has not worked, that new measures are required and, in fact, that the reliance on institutional investors to deliver homes and apartments is an unreliable approach?

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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The planning permission data released by the CSO last week is concerning. It can be seen within the data that the overall dip is driven mainly by a fall in the permissions for apartments.

This illustrates the enormous challenge of meeting our revised housing targets, the critical role of apartment delivery in this regard, and the importance of securing private capital investment to fund this delivery at the levels needed over the next decade and beyond. Government is committed to meeting this challenge and is taking a twin-track approach with a mix of pragmatic short-term and strategic long-term actions to help build on the recent significant uplift in delivery and sustain this into the future.

Government is already examining actions to scale-up delivery in the immediate term, pending completion of a new all-of-government national housing plan committed to in the programme for Government. To this end, we are actioning priority commitments in the programme for Government with the potential to make an immediate impact, such as establishing a new strategic housing activation office.

While supporting longer-term delivery, such measures will also help maximise the impact of measures already introduced to strengthen the housing supply pipeline, including the development levy waiver and water connection rebate, which seek, inter alia, to activate the large number of planning permissions already in the system and address viability issues in relation to apartment delivery.

Further proposals for measures to help scale-up delivery to 300,000 new homes by the end of 2030 will be considered in the context of the new plan.

Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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I do not see the radical reset in the Minister's response that the Housing Commission called for and the Minister himself agreed was needed. We know the definition of insanity is continuing the same policy or same approach and expecting a different outcome.

On the question about the planning and apartments, there is over-reliance on institutional investors. Institutional investors invest on the basis of their profit viability projections. If they think that there is not sufficient profit there, they do not invest. Is the policy plan essentially to increase their profits so that it becomes, in their estimation, viable? We know what that means. It means rents rising or other ways. Is the Minister talking about, as we have heard, tax breaks? Is he talking about more subsidies? The Government's own croí conaithe scheme, The Irish Times showed today, has only delivered 20% of the apartments it was supposed to deliver. In that, developers could get €120,000 per apartment. Where is it proposed that the subsidies would end?

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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This year the Government has already committed €6.5 billion towards delivering housing in this country. We need probably a minimum of €20 billion spent on housing to deliver the necessary housing. The rest of that money has to come from the private sector. Financial firms, whether national or international, are a key part of that because you need that private funding to deliver those properties.

While the Deputy is quick to criticise, his own manifesto commits to private funding to deliver housing in this country and yet he is not setting out what he would do in terms of where he would get that funding from.

We will look at this radically again. I accept international firms need to make a profit. That is stating the obvious. We need to look at this to see how we can get those investors back into this country - they are in other countries - to deliver through the private sector the housing that we need in this country.

Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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The Minister is repeating the same tropes that the Taoiseach repeats that we have had no alternatives. If the Minister looked at our election manifesto, he is correct that we talked about using private investment but it is the particular type of private investment. The Taoiseach is also spinning this by saying we are against private investment. We are not against private investment in housing. What we are against is shaping the entire housing system around the profitability demands of institutional funds and institutional investors. There are multiple different forms of private investment. One of the solutions we have put forward is using a new State saving scheme, as they do in France, to leverage the €160 billion that is available in banks in this country. We cannot just rely on commercial banks to channel that money into housing. What they have in France is a state saving scheme that creates a fund that funds affordable housing directly. Why can we not do that? That is private finance but it is not the speculative private finance that the Government seems to be obsessed with.

James Browne (Wexford, Fianna Fail)
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It is private finance that will also want a profit. No matter what way you do it, private finance will always seek a profit - even those Irish savers if you tapped into them. I am not against that. We are going to examine that carefully to see if that can be done, but they will still want a profit for their funding. They are not going to put their money away if they do not think they are going to make a profit. No matter what way you do this, private finance requires a profit to instigate that type of investment. We will look at all the possible levers to do that.