Paudie Coffey (Waterford, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to respond to some of the points raised by Senator Bradford and to reassure him regarding the perception he might have that I am a Minister for the construction industry. That is not true. I am the Minister of State with special responsibility for the co-ordination of the Construction 2020 strategy, which is a Government strategy, adopted in the best interests of society, on how best to provide houses. I further reassure the Senator that we now have the Housing Agency, which is an independent organisation with professional expertise available to it in terms of planning, analysing demographics, and making recommendations to Government to inform policy and infrastructure investments. The Housing Agency is working with my Department to identify where demand is real, the types of units that are needed. The local authorities, the approved housing bodies, and many other stakeholders, including the construction sector, are required to develop and deliver that infrastructure.

Second Stage of the Urban Regeneration and Housing Bill, to which I briefly referred, will be taken in the Dáil this evening. The Senator will welcome the debate when the Bill is before this House and will find there are measures in it that the construction sector is not happy about. The Part V element remains because we want to see social housing units being developed and we are removing the flexibility which the construction sector previously had whereby they could give cash payments to local authorities in lieu of housing units. That was opposed by the construction sector but we need housing units. There are also concerns in the construction sector about the vacant site levy but the Government feels we must regenerate sites of high potential in our cities and towns which already have public infrastructure lying at the footpath in order to maximise the investment that has already been made by the taxpayer.

These are measures that I and the Government are taking to generally improve the availability of houses and not necessarily to improve the lot of developers and the construction sector. They will, however, generally improve construction jobs and the delivery of affordable, quality houses which is what we want for all our citizens.