Seán Kyne (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the motion from Sinn Féin and the opportunity for debate it provides. I welcome the Minister of State. As I have said previously in the House, I recollect that in 2011, when I was in the other House, we had a debate on housing in which we talked about developers and banks that had gone bust, ghost estates, people in negative equity and the IMF being in charge of the country. Those were the challenges in 2011 and for a number of years thereafter before we reformed the economy, balanced the books and built up our ability to reinvest through Rebuilding Ireland and, more recently, the further investment under Housing for All.

There is no doubt there are still challenges within the housing sector. Nobody here is trying to pretend otherwise. Housing for All recognises those challenges. There is a recognition in the decisions the Government has made and the investment we have put in place under Housing for All of the need to ramp up supply of all types of housing, including social housing, private homes, houses for rent, approved housing body homes and student accommodation. Each and every type of housing is needed. We need new houses, brownfield sites and targeted measures in regard to derelict and vacant properties. The schemes the Government has introduced in recent years have ramped up supply.

The figures are evident for anyone to see. Housing for All is successfully supporting a significantly increased supply of new homes. A record 32,695 homes were completed in 2023, which was a 10% increase on 2022 and the highest number of new homes delivered in 15 years. We exceeded the 2023 target of 29,000 by almost 13%. That is delivery. We wish the number was higher. We hope it will be higher next year, higher again the following year and so on. The latest annual data on the number of commencements published in January 2024 show that almost 33,000 new homes were commenced last year, which is the highest number of annual commencements on record and an increase of 21.5% compared with 2022. It is the highest number of annual residential commencements since records began in 2014. These are positive trends in the delivery of new homes, which is what we want to see. Everybody in these Houses wants to see the number of commencements and the delivery of new houses increasing. That is what is happening. With continued investment and a continuing stable environment and competent Government, we will see the figures continue to grow.

The flagship schemes such as the derelict and vacant house grants have been successful but we need to see continued investment. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I hear anecdotally that auctioneers are being slightly hesitant of advising people to go down the road of applying for the grants because of the paperwork involved. The Minister of State might comment on that. I hope it is not the case. Once approval is granted, it necessarily takes time to deliver the project and then there is the payment, draw-down and verification process. We need to ensure the timeline between completion of bringing a house back to a liveable standard and payment of the grant is as short as possible. There has been some discussion of whether we should go down the line of staged payments. I can see issues with that. It would ensure the owner of the property has the cash to complete the project but, at the same time, there would have to be verification processes. It might increase the level of administration to a degree. The Minister of State might indicate whether a change is being considered in this regard.

On student accommodation, the Minister, Deputy Harris, recently visited the University of Galway to open the Dunlin Village student accommodation. Goldcrest Village was opened a number of years ago. This amounts to real delivery of student accommodation on campus. There are more than 1,000 beds in those two developments. This investment needs to be replicated in other locations. Galway has done particularly well on student accommodation. Compliments to the University of Galway for its work in this regard. We need to see this investment rolled out to the technological universities. The Government has made decisions on making finance available for that purpose, which is important. The more student accommodation that is provided, the more private rental property is freed up in cities like Galway, Limerick and Dublin. It is hugely important that we continue to see investment both by the State where necessary, by providing loans, and also through direct investment by the universities and technological universities themselves.

We must continue to ensure all types of houses are built. Some people are negative about private developers. In fact, developers have a very important, but not exclusive, role. They have an important role to play in providing private homes both to buy and rent. As I said, there has been an amount of investment to increase delivery of all types of homes across all regions of the country. We must have stable government and good management of the economy to ensure that level of investment continues through Housing for All.