Joe O'Reilly (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister of State. It is good to have him here. I will make sure my phone is off.

I welcome this conversation and congratulate Sinn Féin on initiating it. It is important we discuss housing regularly and look at where we are. As a Government we can be particularly proud of where we have got to now. I will give some headline figures as quickly as I can. Since 2016, 166,000 new homes have been built, with almost 33,000 in 2023, which is the highest number in 15 years. There have been 30,000 commencements since the start of this year, with 18,000 in April. They are impressive figures. Another important figure is that since 2020, 10,820 vacant homes have been brought back into use and, an important facet - I will be finished with the figures after this - is that 12,000 social homes were provided in 2023 with 8,100 new build social houses. That is critical. The plan is to reach 22,500 new social housing units.

One of our greatest initiatives and achievements in government has been the Croí Cónaithe scheme. It is transformative for rural and urban Ireland. It provides up to €70,000 for an especially derelict house and €50,000 for one that is less so. That is a significant grant and it is causing a lot of activity. I know this anecdotally and from driving around the country. Where the Minister of State and I come from, we appreciate the importance of getting rid of derelict buildings, changing them and making them homes. A lot of interesting and exciting things are happening in that regard. That is a particularly good initiative and it should remain. If I understood my distinguished and capable colleague, Senator Dolan, correctly, she suggested staged payments in that area and I agree with that and anything the enhances the scheme. There should not be an issue with it and I commend it to the Minister of State. That is a significant achievement of the Government.

There is a popular suggestion that the help to buy scheme can be inflationary, but it is a significant intervention for people. I had a lovely young couple with me last week in my clinic who had an issue. When people are paying rent, it is impossible to save adequately. I was able to direct them to this scheme and, effectively through tax relief, they can get their deposit, so the help to buy scheme is significant. It was an especially good initiative by the Government and should be maintained.

As I said, we have had significant gains in social housing. The building of social housing should be an enormous priority. It is efficacious for society on many levels that we have a good social housing scheme. It bubbles up. It soaks people out of the housing demand and it creates a situation where we are getting a lot more people housed. Some of the historical heritage in our culture going back to the Famine is diminishing and an increasing number of people will proudly enter the beautiful social houses we are building and happily live in them. That is important. It takes the pressure off the other markets as well. I commend to the Minister of State a continued big focus on social housing and, as Senator Dolan said, affordable housing, which is an important concept. People need to be able to access affordable housing.

When Sinn Féin reflects on the landscape, it will have to say in its summation that when you look at the landscape we inherited, where we came from and the fact that, when we came into government, the entire building industry was at an effective standstill and think of where we have come to in respect of new builds, the exciting number of starts and new builds I cited at the outset, the exciting Croí Cónaithe scheme, the exciting work on social housing, which needs further initiatives, a reasonable objective analysis would be, if I could borrow a slogan Senator Fitzpatrick will be familiar with, a lot has been done. We are the first to accept that there is more to do, but a lot has been done. The fact a lot has been done should give people confidence to say to themselves when they are voting in the local and European elections that a Government that has achieved so much from what could be called a greenfield site in the literal sense is worthy of endorsement and support to go on building on this. We are in an exciting place. We are going places but we need to go places because it is a horror. I will end on this. It is a horror that troubles everyone in politics of all hues, shapes and sizes and of all parties and none to see young people living in the family home beyond the natural age for that. We want that to change and the exorbitant rents to go, which they will if we increase supply. We are achieving hugely. I am very proud of that achievement. I look forward to the Minister of State’s response on Croí Cónaithe and Senator Dolan’s proposition; social housing and affordable housing; the new builds; and his view of the help to buy scheme, which my clinic work would suggest is a positive intervention.