Results 681-700 of 15,555 for speaker:Eoghan Murphy

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: A year ago, I gave the Deputy a timeframe about getting the eligibility criteria in place first, then the economic assessments for those local authorities not on the priority list and then we will do the financial criteria.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: I have been signalling this every step of the way.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: It has been answered.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: I have answered the question every time the Deputy has asked it. Just because he is not happy because it is not yet in place does not mean that I have not answered his question. I have told the Deputy that we do not want it in place too early because that would be pointless. People should not apply for schemes which may not be open for another 12 months. It will be ready in time and when...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: Stop interrupting me. Please.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: The Deputy had five minutes. He asked a series of different questions across the entire Rebuilding Ireland programme. I have no problem answering them if I am given the space to do so. I have been fair in answering but he has interrupted me. He cannot start this back and forth and not let me finish a sentence. It is very improper in terms of the conduct of the committee. It is...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: I thank Deputy Casey for his contribution. He tied together a number of challenges that people and some families in particular in this country are having at the moment that are not all related to housing. As Deputies, we all have constituents who have problems and we all try to help them in the ways that we can. We have a responsibility nationally as parliamentarians to make sure that this...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: I thank the Deputy for interrupting again. It is incredible.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: There were a lot of problems with that Bill, and I outlined them in the Dáil at the time. If it reaches Committee Stage, I will outline them then too. Nothing has stopped a good idea from making it through the House. Let us be fair to ourselves. When we introduced the Residential Tenancies (Amendment) Act 2019 earlier in the year, positive proposals made by Deputies on all sides of...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: That is a very important point to make. The number of homes built in the State in 2013 was just over 4,000. The construction sector was decimated in the crash. We had to get to increase the number of homes being built to meet the demand that was already there, but during that time demand has been increasing because of net immigration due to the economy doing well. This has created an...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: I thank the Senator and echo his call. There is hypocrisy in this debate and I encounter it every day. When people start to speak they are visibly distressed about the number of people in emergency accommodation and by the end they are talking about how they are against apartments being built at the end of their road. The two things are connected.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: I have never lodged an objection to housing in my life, either as a councillor or Member of the Oireachtas, because I do not believe that is our function. It really bothers me when I see Deputies trying to rabble-rouse local residents around objections, even around judicial reviews. Those same Deputies then give out about the Government not doing enough about housing. Politicians need to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: I thank the Senator for her contribution. Thankfully, there was a reduction in the number of families and children in emergency accommodation in October. The increase that happened was driven by adults. That roughly correlates with the number of new beds we put in place and also with the number of people who are no longer rough sleeping. There has been a movement off the streets or out of...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: As an elected representative, the Senator must be responsible enough to be able to distinguish between what is working in the context of the plan and what she thinks is not working. It is irrefutable - it is recorded by the CSO - that there are 64,000 new places in which to live that were not there prior to the introduction of Rebuilding Ireland. In the past 12 months, 26,000 homes have...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: On the issue of sex for rent and matters that Deputies Barry and Coppinger have previously raised with me, we had meetings, which the Deputies will know because they attended them, and I had a further meeting on the matter earlier today. Following our previous engagement, in November, I made a commitment to the Deputies that I would contact the RTB and that we would also ensure that the Rape...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: The meeting was about ensuring that the RTB was in touch with the Rape Crisis Centre and to develop the criteria for questions and how they might be formulated. The survey is ambitious work that the RTB is doing, and it will involve a large sample. I cannot recall the figure the Deputy seeks, although I believe I gave it to him at our previous meeting. We will publish the details of the...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: The spend on HAP is too high. It is so high because we have a dependency on HAP that we should not have. Until we increase the level of social and general house building sufficiently, that dependency will remain. Interestingly, the numbers show that we have spent less on HAP this year than in previous years, while the number of people being supported in HAP under the plan has started to...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: I will presently. At the end of this year, I will report on a ratio of approximately 2:1 for local authority builds to housing body builds because local authority housing does the heavy lifting.

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: I will report on the matter fully when there is a full year. I do not like reporting or guessing in advance when four full quarters have not passed. The targets we published for 2019 were just over 6,500 for builds. The local authority part of that is more than 3,000, the housing body figure is more than 1,500, while the private sector part, through its Part V obligation, is more than...

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Housing, Planning and Local Government: Update on Rebuilding Ireland: Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government (12 Dec 2019)

Eoghan Murphy: What I said was that I do not like reporting on full year output at the end of quarter 3. I do not think it is very smart to do that, because one does not have the full four quarters to give a yearly output. I have been in this job for more than two and a half years now, and we had the same dialogue in 2018. At the end of each quarter, the Deputy came in here, looked at the quarters 1, 2...