Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

It was a challenge and that was part of it. A more fundamental issue is that we have a post-colonial obsession with property, which underlines every one of the issues I mentioned earlier. People see home ownership as providing stability. I strongly believe, however, that we should be looking at a more European model with a greater menu of options for home ownership. There should be greater security of tenure in the private rented sector in order that people would be happy to spend their entire lives in rental accommodation. In the reforms we are making in the private rented sector, we have to give people greater stability, not just in terms of tenure but also in that fundamental belief that they will be protected in a rental environment. That includes protection from noisy neighbours, eviction or whatever else untoward may happen in a neighbourhood. We would have a healthier housing market as a result.

This debate is not so much about looking at the causes of the problem, more about finding solutions to what now faces us. The work being undertaken by my Department and my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Finneran, is all about finding a way out of the challenges we have. The National Housing Development Survey is a necessary and critical first step in tackling the problems associated with unfinished developments. It establishes an authoritative baseline analysis at a national level of unfinished housing developments to assist in fully understanding the scale and extent of the issues. We are putting actual figures in place of estimations. We are replacing vagueness with certainty and, most of all, we are underpinning a clear plan of action to remedy critical situations in the most problematic developments.

I was interested to hear Commissioner Ollie Rehn saying yesterday that we need better medium-term planning. He was talking about financial planning, but this country also needs better physical planning in the medium term. Let us move away from tax incentives and look at the real needs of counties such as Longford, Roscommon and others. We can plan better and provide an improved quality of living and working environments in those areas if we look beyond bricks-and-mortar solutions.

I am grateful for the plaudits given to me for initiating this survey and, while I would like to take the credit, I cannot do so. It was initiated by the officials in my Department. I want to place on the record my appreciation of the far-sighted work they undertook to determine the extent of the problem before I took office. It is a strong, evidence-based survey. We have that survey and are now taking prompt action. We have put in place a committee which met for the second time today. Its members sat down with a draft manual and are making some revisions to it. We want to move full steam ahead and put the manual out for public consultation in order that everyone can make their contribution, including residents. I take the point that perhaps residents should be represented on the committee. I have an open mind on that point and will certainly re-examine it.

I wish to set out briefly the key figures emerging from the survey. More than 2,800 housing developments were identified where construction had commenced but had not been completed. That translated into more than 180,000 housing units for which planning permission has been granted. Of those units, more than 120,000 dwellings have commenced construction while 77,000 are completed and occupied. A further 33,000 homes are either completed and vacant or nearly complete. Some 23,000 of these are complete and 10,000 require final fit-out and connection to services.

The 33,000 complete and nearly complete dwellings identified in the survey represent the most realistic assessment available of the overhang of new dwellings on the housing market. A remaining 10,000 dwellings are at various stages of construction, from preliminary site clearance to foundations to wall plate level. While the results of this survey will not immediately change the reality for those living in unfinished housing developments and who are deeply concerned for the future of those developments, it presents a strong evidence basis for the delivery of action.

I take Senator Brady's point that people were getting into building who had no background or understanding of it. Some 15 years ago, when I was a councillor in Dublin, I recall someone ringing me up to say he was having fierce problems getting planning permission. He got a nurse to draw up the drawings and could not understand why he was not being granted permission. That level of incompetence in the construction sector added substantially to the problems we are now dealing with. I do not remember whether the nurse managed to get planning permission for her client in the end, but it illustrates the challenges that existed, especially when we force fed tax incentives at the problem.