Aidan Davitt (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat. I hope that Senator Coffey will forgive me. I credited him, Deputy Kelly or the Government of the time with 75 houses, but the Minister stated that it was 72. There is a disconnect. I do not want to misquote the Minister, but my understanding is that we are discussing just under 50,000 houses within five years from next year onwards, or a little under 10,000 houses per year. We will mainly secure those through building. Is that correct? The Minister can revert to me. How will we move from a position of only building 10,000 private and public houses across the entire country to the number outlined? The Minister stated that it would be demanding, but I do not know how we will secure 10,000 houses per annum.

I wish to make a couple of suggestions that might be helpful and are worth considering. We must urgently strengthen the apprenticeship programmes. What can we do to help employers in this regard? We must consider a scheme to encourage people to return to the building industry. I welcome the Minister's statement that he is dealing with county councils directly. We must make their housing officers and relevant directors responsible. Every county should have a certain output of units per capitaand per annum in line with their waiting lists. Long gone are the days when no one would take responsibility for something and it would land on the Minister's desk. The Minister stated that he would be active with the councils, the numbers look great and he has testified to the numbers nationally, but there should be a breakdown per county and he should explain what he expects councils to do. Let their directors, housing officers and managers stand over their work. This would be a step forward.

In my time with councils, I was shocked by housing bodies and the money that some of them were hoarding. The balance sheets of some are incredible. Many sat on their hands in recent years while we were in the depths of a housing tsunami. I was involved with several on a number of projects during my time as a councillor. It was "Yes", "Maybe", "Might be" and going around in circles. It was all a great game, but nothing materialised. Not enough pressure is put on the bodies in question to cough up money and build housing lest they face repercussions. The Minister needs to use a stick with some of the housing agencies.

A couple of other issues are worth addressing again, for example, the factors that fed into this problem. Under the spatial strategy, 10% of lands were dezoned indiscriminately. It might be helpful to consider another issue. If one's planning permission ran out in recent years, one could renew it once for five years further. Many people renewed their permissions in 2008 and 2009.