Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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After months of delay, it is finally here. Almost a year into this Government, it is only now publishing its housing plan. Given the amount of time this has taken, we can be forgiven for expecting something bold and new, a plan, as the Tánaiste once said himself, to once and for all tackle the housing crisis. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Anyone who will take the time to read the plan will know the emperor has no clothes. In fact, this is not a new housing plan at all. It is nothing more than a reheating and repackaging of the failed housing plan of the last Government.

Today should have been a moment of hope for all those in need of affordable housing. Instead, it is another punch in the gut for all those without a home of their own. Once again, the Government is underestimating overall housing need and, as a result, the housing deficit will continue to grow. There is no increased funding or targets for the delivery of social homes. The result will be even longer council waiting lists and ever more adults and children experiencing homelessness. There is no increased funding or targets for the delivery of genuinely affordable homes. Instead, the Government is brazenly trying to rebrand unaffordable private homes as somehow affordable. There is also no plan to fix the Government's broken affordable housing schemes. This week, we learned so-called affordable apartments in O'Devaney Gardens in Dublin will cost €500,000. So-called affordable rental homes in the same development are expected to cost €1,900 a month. This is on land once owned by the council and gifted for free to a developer by the Tánaiste’s Government.

The Government's failure on affordable housing will mean that the locked-out generation will continue to be locked out, forced to choose between their parents’ box bedroom or emigration. The only promise the Government is keeping in this plan is its promise to attack renters. From March of next year, tens of thousands of renters will face even higher rip-off rents for the privilege of being forced to live in smaller and darker apartments. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil’s housing policy was written by and for big investors and developers to benefit their private interests. The needs of ordinary people, workers and families have once again been ignored. For ten years, the Government has starved our councils of the resources and staff to deliver public housing on public land at scale, all the while showering investor funds, corporate landlords and big developers with subsidies and tax breaks like confetti. Today's plan does not move a single inch from that disastrous approach.

Despite what they are going to say on the radio and television, the Government’s backbenchers must be privately reeling. In fact, even the Minister for housing, Deputy James Browne, is not hanging around to defend his own plan. Instead of debating with Opposition spokespeople on television and radio this evening, he is fleeing the country to speak - believe it or not - at a housing conference in England.

It did not have to be this way. The Government could have taken on board the recommendations of its own Housing Commission or adopted the many solutions promised by Sinn Féin and others. It could have included actual, measurable targets year on year for all of its schemes, but why would it bother doing that when it knows already it is going to miss them? Instead, it has decided to do nothing different and nothing new. Given the Government's decade of failure, why should anyone believe anything is going to change now?

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Today is a significant day in terms of housing policy in Ireland. It comes after a number of decisions the Government has already taken. This plan today needs to be seen in the context of the national development plan published this summer, where we significantly increased the level of investment directly in house building. After listening to people across the country, local authorities and people who build our homes, we also significantly increased the funding for the enabling infrastructure, investing more than €50 billion between water, transport and energy to enable housing supply. The plan also needs to be seen in the context of a piece of work that will conclude at the end of this month, which will speed up the delivery of infrastructure. Something we can all agree on is that we need to accelerate the delivery of infrastructure. There are too many communities in which it is taking too long to deliver vital projects. We were very clear during the election that fixing this would be a key priority for the Government.

It is also important to say that, yes, we are living though a housing emergency, and the purpose of the plan today is to make real progress and deliver 300,000 more homes during the lifetime of the plan, but it is also important for people watching at home to know there are some encouraging signs too. In the first half of this year, we saw completion of new homes at the highest it has been since 2008. We saw the number of new dwellings completed in the first three quarters of this year increase by 13% on the same period last year. These are additional new homes completed compared with the same period last year. For quarter 1 to quarter 3 of this year, we saw the highest completion figure of apartments for any time since 2011 when data started to be gathered. Something that is never said in this House from the Opposition benches is that we have seen the highest number of first-time buyers draw down their mortgage since 2007. We have seen more than 11,000 properties being approved under the vacant property refurbishment grant. The scale of challenge in relation to housing and ramping up housing supply is real and acute, but these are also real statistics that are having real benefits in the lives of people across our country.

The Deputy said today, as I expected him to say, no matter what was in the plan - I could have said it for him - that there is nothing new in the plan. Of course, that is not true. There are many new things in this plan, including a new €1 billion infrastructure investment fund to help to de-risk the development of sites in towns and cities to maximise their potential opportunities. There are measures to enable developers to deliver new stand-alone wastewater treatment plants in rural Ireland. Across my constituency and the country I have heard of parts of our country where it has not been possible to build any homes because of the inability to allow a developer to deliver a wastewater treatment plant, albeit to an Irish Water standard.

There is a new fund, which I presume the Deputy will welcome, of €400 million over the next three years for small developers. I do not think he does welcome it.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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It is not new. It already exists.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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That is welcome news.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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It has existed since 2023.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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There is also an additional €100 million, specifically in 2026, to get families out of emergency accommodation, particularly children-----

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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It has existed since 2023.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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-----and into homes. It is new money of €100 million that has not yet been spent in 2026. Do not mislead the people. The Deputy will accept it is €100 million for 2026 that has not yet been spent. That will need to be repeated each year during the lifetime of this plan. There is a new performance fund to incentivise local authorities to exceed their annual own-build social house targets. Targets are not the ceiling. They need to go further, drive on and do more.

There is a starter home programme delivering an average of 15,000 affordable home supports per year for families, including many schemes which, quite frankly, the Deputy would scrap. Under Sinn Féin, the help to buy and first home schemes would be gone, first home owners would be abandoned, restrictions would be made to the vacant and derelict property grant, the Land Development Agency would be abolished despite the fact it is now delivering real homes for real people across our country. Restrictions Sinn Féin would put in place would mean a garda married to a nurse in the fourth year of their jobs would not be able to access supports under Sinn Féin’s so-called affordable home scheme. We had the election and Sinn Féin’s proposals were rejected. We are getting on with the job.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The Tánaiste has been in government for more than ten years-----

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I have.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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-----and he has been telling us the same story over and over again. In 2016, Simon Coveney’s plan had all of the same promises, all of which were broken. In 2021, Darragh O'Brien's plan again had all of the same promises and all were broken. Today, all we are getting is more of the same. None of the things the Tánaiste has just described as new are new.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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They are.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The €100 million for vacant social housing acquisitions for families who are homeless has existed every year since 2020. In fact, this year the Government cut the funding for that scheme from last year. The €400 million equity fund has been in place since 2023. Yes, it is going to be extended but it is not new. The only thing that is new is the Tánaiste refusing to tell us and the public how many new-build social, cost-rental and affordable homes the Government will deliver each year and how it will make them actually affordable. The Government failed in 2016 and 2021 and it is failing again today.

Deputies:

Hear, hear.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I agree there is certainly one fundamental difference between Sinn Féin and the Government when it comes to housing. Sinn Féin wants this plan to fail because it believes it will do well if our housing plan fails. We intend to work every night and day to build housing but Sinn Féin thrives on the misery-----

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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It has been the same story for a decade.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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-----and exploiting the intergenerational anxiety of others.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The same story for a decade.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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It needs this plan to fail-----

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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The Government is creating the intergenerational anxiety by its failure over and over again.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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-----so it can exploit the challenges people face.

Of course, the Government is not going to fail because the Government has already delivered. The Deputy talks about my record in government. We delivered over 137,000 new homes during the lifetime of Housing for All.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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You missed your social housing targets every year.

John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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Deputy Ó Broin, please.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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We will deliver 300,000 homes-----

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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You missed your affordable housing targets every year.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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You will not shout me down.

John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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Allow the Tánaiste to answer.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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You will not shout me down. You will not bully me.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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You cannot deliver homes at genuinely affordable prices.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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You will not shout me down. Let me speak, please.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I am speaking in a very reasonable tone of voice.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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No, you are shouting me down when it is my time to speak.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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I am reminding you of your failures.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The people at home actually want to know what we are going to do and what we are going to do is very clear. We are going to deliver a plan that has a record level of funding, that breaks down silos, that puts a new focus on starter homes, and that sets targets for local authorities. The Deputy tells people there are no targets; that is simply untrue. The target is over 300,000 homes in the lifetime of the plan.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Where is the annual target to measure progress?

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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When we had an action plan on jobs, we did not set an annual target-----

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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Where are the annual targets?

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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-----but we exceeded that target, delivered jobs and got our country back to full employment.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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They are not there because you know you will not meet them.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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We will exceed the housing target as well.

Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)
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You know you will not meet them.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Your plan was rejected-----

John McGuinness (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fianna Fail)
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Deputy Ó Broin, please.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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-----and you want this plan to fail so you can politically thrive.

Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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I do not want this plan to fail. The future of our country, particularly for people my age, depends on it. At last this morning, we have a new housing plan but I have never seen any government take so long to come up with so little. This time last year, the Government deliberately misled the electorate in terms of the housing targets. During the election, the Government never publicised its plans to hike rents, change the rental rules and shrink apartment sizes. This new plan tells us that the Government will deliver 300,000 homes by 2030 but it will need a minor miracle to deliver that. The Government has abandoned targets for the private sector and it is very clear that it has done this to shield itself from accountability because what one cannot count, one cannot measure.

The overall targets for this plan are wrong. They are too low and do not consider inbuilt demand due the housing deficit. The previous target for over 40,000 homes this year was a fiction so how is anyone expected to believe the Government will deliver 300,000 homes by 2030? The Central Bank projections are clear that only 36,000 homes will be delivered in 2026 and 40,000 in 2027. That leaves 200,000 homes to be built in the second half of this plan. That is a doubling of current delivery, with no sense that the private sector can or will do it. Construction activity is falling month on month. Developers are on the go-slow because they know they have the Government on the hook. The target of 12,000 social units is only a 20% increase on current targets when what is needed is closer to 15,000, as we proposed in our manifesto and as the Housing Commission, which the Government continues to ignore, stated.

In the section on promoting affordable ownership, there are no new measures, bar prize bonds, to make ownership a reality for people my age. In fact, the Government talks about new schemes but what it has done is mainly just a PR exercise of repackaging existing supports or renaming them. The Government's previous plan for affordable homes never delivered on its targets and its solution is to effectively put all of the supports together and rename them. There is nothing in this plan to show how the Government will build the tens of thousands of extra affordable homes we need or how house prices will come down, which they need to do.

We are told the LDA will have an expanded role but only €2.5 billion of additional funding is being provided and there is no clarity around what specific powers the agency will have. What is needed is a massive ramping up of State capacity to directly build social and affordable homes.

I have several questions. Why has the Government abandoned its annual targets? What is the Government's measure of success for this plan in year one? Will homelessness fall? What new specific measures are in this plan to make home ownership affordable again? What does the Government say to any young person, to people my age? Is it, as the Minister said, that they just have to hang in there and for what? Will it be for another 15 or 20 years?

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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First, I want to extend my deepest sympathy to Deputy Sheehan's colleague, Deputy George Lawlor, on the passing of his mum, Betty. I understand he delivered a very heart warming tribute to her yesterday and I join Members across the House in extending my sympathy to him and all of his family at this difficult time.

I thank Deputy Sheehan for raising these issues. I accept that he does not want the plan to fail. I also accept that generally our engagements in relation to housing are constructive. We have different perspectives and different views on occasion but I appreciate that point.

I have to reject or disagree with a number of the assertions the Deputy has made. Yes, the State needs to do more in terms of direct building but there is no way the State is going to build all of the homes that our country requires. I think the Deputy and I can agree on that. There is a target of delivering 300,000 more homes over the lifetime of the plan. Roughly speaking, from memory, around 162,000 of those homes will either be social homes, local authority homes or will be homes that are part-funded through a variety of Government schemes. That is a very significant proportion. In fact, I would argue that this country is investing more Exchequer funding relative to the market than many, if not most, other European countries. Even doing that, I think the Deputy and I will also agree that we are still going to need the private sector to build more homes as well. That is where we are going to get the bulk of delivery. To do that we have to open up sites and listen to those who build homes and the local authorities in terms of the feedback they are getting as well. That is why I reject the assertion that there is nothing in this plan that is going to make a material difference. We are investing hugely in the enabling infrastructure around water and wastewater. We are enabling small developers on small sites to put in their own infrastructure which will help rural and regional communities right across the country.

In relation to the targets, just to be clear on this, the target is very clear. It is 300,000 more homes over the lifetime of the plan. When we were in government with Deputy Sheehan's party, we had a target for the action plan on jobs of 100,000 new jobs. We did not break it down every year, and the Labour Party did not look for that either, but we exceeded the target. We have got to be clear here. I do not accept this idea of arbitrary deadlines, whether something is finished on 31 December or 1 January, or the idea that somebody can sit back and say they have done their bit for this county for this year and will wait until next year. We need a constant pipeline over the lifetime of this plan and we need people hungry to do more. That is why, as the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, and the Minister, Deputy Browne, have made clear, we are putting a fund in place to reward and incentivise local authorities that go above and beyond their so-called target in terms of either social or starter homes.

In relation to children, and child homelessness in particular, we are taking two very significant steps. One is the fund to help get families out of homelessness, with €100 million next year to be ring-fenced. I am being clear that this is going to need to be repeated each year. That needs to really ramp up, to resource and fund our local authorities in a ring-fenced way to help to get children out of homelessness and get a roof over their heads. The second step - and I have heard Focus Ireland and others seek this - is changes to the social housing allocation scheme to prioritise homeless children. That is also in the plan.

Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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In his reply, the Tánaiste did not address any of the specific questions I asked. The fact of the matter is that there are elements in this plan that I welcome. Some of those elements are things that we already proposed, such as amending the law to ensure the best interests of children are taken into account by local authorities when families become homeless. Former Deputy Jan O'Sullivan had that in a Bill in 2017.

The fact is that the State is not doing enough in terms of directly building social and affordable housing. Most of the homes that the LDA delivered in recent years were turnkey units. The State is investing significant sums in housing but a lot of it is going into inflationary schemes. When I talk to local authorities, they do not want financial incentives. They want the Department to engage with them properly and work with them constructively, not to stand in their way. They are very keen to get on with the job of building the homes we need.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Some of them are, and some are better than others. I do not think it is uniform across the country. I have got to be very honest. I have a league table that the Minister for housing has published, which shows some local authorities well exceeding their council targets for social housing, including the county of Wicklow that I represent, and others making a paltry contribution. When national targets are missed, they are not missed at a national level. They are missed by local authorities. I do not believe that every local authority is doing everything possible. I do not believe there is a consistent approach, whereby every hospital equally performs and every council equally performs. That is why we should incentivise good behaviour, good practice, good policy and political courage to do more and deliver more in communities.

I do not agree with the assertion around the Land Development Agency. I have just come from Donore, a site here in Dublin city, where we are delivering with the LDA, in partnership with Dublin City Council, one-, two- and three-bedroom units. I would ask the Labour Party to reflect on this. We are trying to make changes to apartment standards so we can have flexibility to deliver more accommodation and one of its elected representatives-----

Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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To make them smaller and darker-----

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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-----is going to court. One of its elected representatives has rushed to the courts to try to block those changes to apartment standards.

Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Fine Gael's lord mayor is not in favour of it.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I ask Deputy Sheehan respectfully, as his party's spokesperson on housing-----

Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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Your own lord mayor is not in favour of it.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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-----to pick up the phone to his councillor and tell him to stop weaponising the use of the courts to try to delay changes we need to make to apartment standards.

There will be students in Limerick who need more apartments and student accommodation to be built and the Labour Party councillor is actively delaying that in my respectful opinion.

Conor Sheehan (Limerick City, Labour)
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That is completely disingenuous.

John Cummins (Waterford, Fine Gael)
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It is not. It is true.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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On behalf of the Social Democrats, I extend sympathies to Deputy Lawlor.

Fine Gael has been in government for nearly 15 years. That is 15 years of promises, plans and press conferences with Ministers donning hard hats, 15 years spent turning the housing crisis into a housing disaster. Under the Tánaiste's watch, house prices have almost doubled, skyrocketing rents have more than doubled and the number of people who are homeless has increased by more than 400%.

This morning Fine Gael's fourth housing plan was launched. This time, we are told, it will be different. How can it be? The plan contains the same recipe for failure. There is no sign of the radical policy changes called for by the Housing Commission. Worse, there is no hope for the locked out generation that anything will get any better.

The housing crisis is a daily struggle etched into the lives of tens of thousands of people. Generations of families are crammed into overcrowded houses. Entire families are living in box rooms. Toddlers are growing up in homeless accommodation without the physical space to learn how to crawl. Adults are stuck in their childhood bedrooms, putting their lives on hold year after year. The mental toll this is taking is immense. Stress, anxiety and hopelessness are becoming the norm for people who are stuck in this housing limbo. People's lives are being ruined.

In the run-up to the last election, Fine Gael promised that 40,000 homes would be built last year. This has been exposed as a complete and utter fabrication. What is the Government's response? It has scrapped annual targets from its housing plan. All of a sudden, it thinks they are a bad idea. I have news for the Tánaiste. The latest desperate attempt to disguise the Government's terrible record in housing will not work. No sleight of hand can hide the mess Fine Gael Governments have made. That annual targets have disappeared from this plan is damning. If the Government had any confidence in its plan, or in its housing Minister, that would not have happened. The housing Minister who has delayed the launch of this plan for almost a year will not even hang around to debate it this evening. He is running scared.

This plan could have been different. It could have been radical. The Government could have announced plans to build a modular homes factory to turbo-charge the delivery of affordable homes. It could have given the Land Development Agency, LDA, the power it needs to assemble land banks and deliver homes quickly. It could have fast-tracked a vacant homes tax with teeth to get tens of thousands of vacant homes back into use. Instead, the Government has reverted to type with sweetheart deals for developers, tax breaks for investment funds and a doubling down on failure. Given Fine Gael's track record of failure in housing, why should people believe this plan will be any better than the ones that came before it?

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I always think phrases such as "donning hard hats" are a bit pejorative. People put on hard hats when they visit building sites because of health and safety. It is the law of the land. Ministers go out and about to meet people who build homes. I am proud to do that and to listen directly to the people who build homes, including at the LDA site I visited with the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, the Minister, Deputy Browne, and the Taoiseach this morning, where more than 500 homes are being built, which will come on stream in 2027. It is a real partnership between Dublin City Council, a developer and the LDA, making a real difference. We will not be prisoners of ideology. We will work in every pragmatic way we can to increase the amount of housing and, as a practical example of that, I will always wear a hard hat on a building site.

The Deputy said it was the fourth housing plan. Of course, it is because the housing plan needs to be replaced every few years. It has a deadline. He also suggested that Fine Gael and Fine Gael alone wrote the last four housing plans. Fine Gael has been in government during that time with Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party, the Green Party and Independents. Many political parties in this House have had an opportunity during that period to feed in their constructive suggestions to the housing plan and this is the latest instalment. On the one hand the Deputy criticised us for having an fourth housing plan while on the other he said it was delayed.

I am genuinely intrigued by the Deputy's political position on tax. Perhaps it is his view that tax should not be used as a viability measure in housing. I disagree but it is a legitimate political view to have. Perhaps he believes that when we look at the ledger we should only use the spending side. We in the Government do not. We believe we should use the spending side to invest massive amounts of the people's money in building infrastructure, whether it be for water, wastewater, electricity or the transport projects that are needed in all our constituencies to open up sites, and directly in housing, including social housing that is being built at record levels. However, we also believe we should use the tax side to reduce the cost of building and there have been encouraging signs since we made that change only a few weeks ago in the reaction of the market.

I value the market. It has an important role to play in the delivery of an increasing supply and I am encouraged by what I heard from those responsible for building apartments; that the decision we took, which we voted for and the Social Democrats voted against, will make a real difference in reducing the cost of building an apartment. If we are to reach or exceed 300,000 units we need a lot more apartments to be built. I am also encouraged by the fact that while we have a long way to go, we have seen the highest completion figure for apartments this year so far between the first quarter and third quarter, in any time since 2011 when my party first came into government in the midst of a financial crisis.

On targets, let me clear. All the data points will continue to be published.

Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats)
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No accountability

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Deputies will continue to see the quarterly commencement figures, the completion figures, the planning permission figures and the mortgage drawdown figures, which show there are more first-time buyers now than at any point since 2007. However, just like the approach we took on the action plan for jobs, we will provide an opportunity for a pipeline over the lifetime of the Government and we will be judged on that. We have been clear in our commitment for 300,000 homes over the lifetime of the plan. That is the target. It is the commitment and it is not the ceiling.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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Fine Gael promised 40,000 homes in the last election campaign. That was a complete and utter fabrication and now it is making its annual housing target disappear because it cannot stand over its record and it does not want accountability on it. Since Fine Gael took office, rents and house prices have soared to record levels, home ownership levels have collapsed and now more than 5,200 children are growing up without a home. That is more than the overall number of people who were homeless when Fine Gael took office.

At the same, it has given away billions in tax subsidies to developers, with no link to affordability measures. Last year the CEO of Glenveagh Properties, one of the largest developers in Ireland, saw his salary balloon by 80% to €2.7 million. That is where some of these subsidies are going, to those kinds of outrageous levels of remuneration.

Why should anyone believe anything the Tánaiste says now will be different?

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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We will be judged on the delivery of this plan. It is a good plan and it is only part of the jigsaw. The national development plan is an equally important part in which we took the decision this summer to significantly increase investment. From memory, there will be over €50 billion extra for the enabling infrastructure such as transport, water, wastewater and energy. That will be key. The next instalment will be at the end of this month, when the Minister, Deputy Chambers, will bring forward proposals to accelerate infrastructure delivery. I hope the Deputy will support proposals that require emergency powers to deliver critical infrastructure more quickly. There is too much running to the courts. People have a right to access the courts. It is not a natural extension of the planning process. There is a thing called the common good or the public good and we need to deliver infrastructure much more quickly and I look forward to debating those points.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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Why will the Minister for housing not be here this evening?

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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The Minister for housing is attending an event. He will look forward to having a debate with the Deputy because he looks forward to hearing how the Social Democrats will build all this stuff.

Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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You would think he would turn up then.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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It is easy to come in here and say they are against everything.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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Where is he going?

Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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Where is he gone?

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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What does the Deputy think I am, his secretary? I do not know where the Minister is going.

Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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The Tánaiste. Surely, you know where your Minister for housing is on the day he launched the housing plan.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I have missed Deputy Gould's interruptions. He was very quiet. I was wondering why he was so quiet.

Thomas Gould (Cork North-Central, Sinn Fein)
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I was waiting for the Minister.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Perhaps it has been a tough day at the Sinn Féin office.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Sinn Féin TDs were a bit quieter with the heckling today.

Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats)
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Did he not get enough training from Ivan Yates to debate people this evening?

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I do not know who trains Deputy O'Callaghan but he would want to get well trained before the next debate on housing.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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This Government is a record breaking Government for all the wrong reasons. There have been record rents, record house prices and record numbers of people who are homeless. The average price of a residential property sold in 2025 was €426,000. I could not believe the figure when I saw it. It is eight times the average income at the moment. The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment is now more than €2,000 per month and the availability of homes to rent has halved since pre-Covid-19 pandemic times. Some 16,600 people are currently languishing in homelessness; 5,200 of them are children and 402 people have died in homelessness in Dublin in five years. For much of the rest of the country that figure is not even measured.

The truth is that the Government is going into reverse in housing. Only 30,000 homes were built last year.

That was a reduction on the year before and left the Government well short of the target. Planning permissions are falling. Planning permissions for apartments have collapsed. Last year, the Government said that it was going to build 12,930 social homes. It missed that target by 2,300. The key problems are not being tackled. Those problems are Government bureaucracy and red tape, a lack of viability, a lack of key infrastructure and a lack of serviced zoned land.

One of the big shocks is that in the middle of a housing crisis, so many construction companies are idle. Many are placing their staff abroad because they cannot work here. They say that no proper pipeline of work is coming through for them here, which is absolutely incredible. The planning situation in this country is mental. It is completely crazy. I heard about a 30,000-page planning permission application for a particular project that the fact that vans were needed to transport it. In the context of another planning permission application, four separate versions of the same plan were required in order to suit four separate agencies. The greater Dublin drainage project, the purpose of which is to help service 100,000 homes, has been in planning for the past ten years. It is now in judicial review again, and is likely to be tied up for many more years. In Ireland, there are 26 judicial reviews per 1 million people. In Britain, it is five per 1 million. Judicial reviews are becoming a national sport in this country.

The issuing of permits and licences in this country under the Government is the slowest in Europe. The tendering process under the Government is one of the slowest in Europe. This has not evolved out of thin air. It has been created by the Government. The lack of infrastructure is hammering the building of homes. Representatives of Uisce Éireann were before the infrastructure committee recently. I asked them how long it is going to take for Uisce Éireann to fill the gaps that are currently acting as a block to the building of homes. They said, proudly, that they will have it done by 2050. That is an incredible situation. At present, Uisce Éireann can hardly keep the water in the taps of houses in County Meath. Thousands of homes are waiting to be built in my county. There is a lack of electricity, water and roads, and that is the Government's responsibility.

I have a different view from those in other Opposition parties. The Government's plan is a tweaker's charter. In other words, it is a case of a little bit here, a little bit there, a grant here and a grant there. The Government does not have the ambition that is needed to fix this problem. When it deliver the radical change that is needed?

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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As is often the case, I agree with the Deputy on some things and disagree with him on others. I will try to take him through that. Rents in this country are too high. That is why we have taken a number of measures to try to increase supply. I am of the view that when you increase the supply of housing, there is a demand-and-supply effect. I also believe that we need to do other things in the here and now. That is why we have took the decision in the budget to extend the rent tax credit for the next number of years. It is also why we rolled out the rent pressure zones nationwide. When this Government came to office in January, parts of this country were not covered by rent pressure zones. Donegal comes to mind in that regard. We fixed that as well. I do not think many people thought this Government was going to do that. However, that was the decision we made.

The Deputy referenced a variety of statistics. I am not disputing them, but, of course, it is a case of lies, damned lies and statistics. The Deputy picked some areas of challenge in the context of the statistics. He referenced planning permissions and the like. I can reference the fact that completions are up and that we saw a huge number of commencements happen when we made the changes to development levies. Our job now is to work with industry to make sure that these are converted into actual homes for people to live in.

The number of first-time buyers is also up. The Deputy will accept that as a statement of fact. The cost of a home is expensive, but we have seen the highest number of first-time buyers this year since 2007.

I agree with the Deputy about the planning issue. Again, I would point to some reforms we have brought in that are bearing fruit. If we were having a debate in this House on this matter not that long ago, we would have been talking about huge backlogs in An Bord Pleanála, as it was then. we are seeing real progress with An Coimisiún Pleanála. There is real progress in decision times and the reduction in wait times. I am hearing that, and the Deputy must be hearing it.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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It is still too slow. It is not meeting the targets.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I am not saying that we are there, but the position is much better than it was. I am putting the House on notice that this Government intends to bring forward legislation in respect of the delivery of critical infrastructure in an emergency manner. I remind people at home that we did that before. We did it in relation to Brexit in the context of port infrastructure. We did it in Rosslare and at Dublin Port. We certainly did it for temporary gas storage. It can be done, and we need to do it. Not everything can be classed as critical infrastructure, but there are major projects, such as those the Deputy referenced, that clearly are critical in nature. We will bring proposals to Government before the end of the year. We will bring proposals to leaders by the end of this month as well, because we need to make sure that where there are projects that are of national significance and there is common good, we speed up delivery.

I have significant concerns about the use of judicial reviews and environmental law. I cannot understand environmental law being used to slow down the delivery of wastewater treatment plants. Wastewater treatment plants improve our environment. In Ireland and in Europe, there is overregulation in this regard. We need to make sure there is not a brass plating or a gold plating of regulation in this country. We also need to ensure that people cannot have an each-way bet with judicial reviews. The Deputy can expect changes from Government in that regard.

Uisce Éireann has made progress. It ran a successful public relations campaign in the context of looking for significant additional funding. I have said this directly to it. We provided that funding on the proviso that there will be a link between it and housing supply. Uisce Éireann cannot be the answer to everything. It has to empower developers involved in small or reasonably small developments in rural and regional areas to put infrastructure in place once it is to the Uisce Éireann standard. That has now been agreed and it will be in place by February.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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It is quite incredible that if a farmer is building a slatted shed in Cavan, a person in Cork can submit an objection in respect of it.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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Yes.

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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We have a Bill that would bring that to an end.

There is a massive issue with serviced land and serviced zoned land that has been ignored over the past while. The Government talks about an audit of that land. Is it not startling that the Government does not know how much zoned land there is in the country or how much serviced zoned land there is? The Tánaiste is saying that there is not enough, yet we have people at the head of county councils and local authorities saying that they have enough. It is incredible that we have had a housing crisis for 15 years and there is no agreement about where this zoned land is. There is serviced land that is not zoned residential. That is the low-hanging fruit when it comes to building houses quickly, and yet the Government still does not know where that is.

In the context of taxes, it is incredible that €3 billion worth of VAT was taken in from the construction of houses last year. Some €50,000 of the price of a normal house at the moment comprises VAT and other service charges. The Government reduced the VAT on apartments. Why did the Government not do that in respect of houses? There is a viability crisis. We have to make those houses viable. Why are so many builders at home sitting on their hands, unable to build in the middle of a housing crisis?

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I am only smiling because the Deputy is the first voice from the Opposition that has actually suggested-----

Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)
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There are different voices in the Opposition.

Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael)
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I really appreciate that because this united Opposition thing gets presented a lot, but there are different voices and different perspectives. The Deputy is the first Member of the Opposition who has critiqued the Government for not going further with our VAT reduction measure. The rest of them have slated us for doing anything at all in respect of it. That is a point of difference. When you are in government, you are trying to get these balances correct.

We made a decision that the acute viability issue related to apartments. We had to make a balanced decision about the composition of the overall package of what was available with regard to tax, and we continue to monitor that. We are encouraged by what we are seeing and by what the industry has said to the Government and to the Oireachtas housing committee in recent weeks.

On the issue of serviced and zoned land, with the residential zoned land tax, which has not been without challenge by farmers and others, issues which we are working through, as the Minister, Deputy Heydon knows, we have seen a significant increase in transactions. In other words, people are not sitting on residential zoned land. That is encouraging. The Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, with the Minister, Deputy Browne, has issued section 28, which is basically to instruct our councils to zone enough land for at least 83,000 houses. This is not rocket science. You have to over-zone because, obviously, not every zoned site converts into homes. It took a little too long for some local authorities to get that point. That is why the Taoiseach, the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, the Minister, Deputy Browne, and I are meeting each of the local authorities' chief executives in small groups. We have met four so far.