Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have just come from a meeting of the Committee of Public Accounts at which there was a very robust engagement by parliamentarians with the Secretary General of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage on the failure by the Department to draw down and spend all its money for last year and the carryover from the year before. I will not get into all the statistics and numbers because there seems to be a lot of confusion in that regard. I then listened to proceedings in the Dáil, where the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage is taking parliamentary questions. That engagement included a protracted debate on the delivery of targets for housing, including social housing, last year. The Taoiseach, to be fair to him, has been honest in saying the Government has not reached its targets in this regard and that it is disappointing. It is important that we have that honesty in our engagement on the housing crisis. It is also important to acknowledge that the Government has delivered 6,500 new social houses. That is positive and I want to acknowledge it. We need a debate in this House on housing. The Minister talked about not making a judgement on the outputs for 2022 until all the numbers and statistics are in. We all, across both Houses, recognise there is a crisis. Rather than dwelling too much on the failures of last year, we should focus on how we can deliver the 29,000 houses that are expected to be delivered in 2023 as part of the commitment by the Government. The focus should be on that and I ask that we have a debate on it early this year.