Alison Comyn (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming in today. He has an unenviable task, but he is meeting it with a head-on challenge and we appreciate that. I will keep it brief as there is quite a bit of repetition today. We all know the issues. We are in the thick of a housing crisis, the likes of which we have not faced before. With the population growing at a phenomenal rate, the demand is constantly outstripping supply. As has been said, Fianna Fáil in government is absolutely committed to building more homes and ensuring that great needs within our society and economy are met. In this regard, Housing for All sets out a comprehensive, multi-annual programme to accelerate and significantly increase the delivery of new homes, which the Minister outlined.

Where I live, south County Louth, is experiencing what can only be described as a building boom, with housing units being completed at a rapid rate, filling the need for homes from the growing population. One of the developers responsible for many of the houses and apartments being built, especially along the new port access route, is Castlethorn, yet its managing director recently went on record explaining how it wants to build 20,000 new homes but the Irish infrastructure is not robust enough. This is not an advertising section for Castlethorn, but it has been tasked with ramping up output to deliver 20,000 homes over the next ten years. As I said, it has several hundred homes started on a site on Drogheda, with capacity for up to 1,400 units. It is also active in Shankill, building 312 units, with a further 370 planned. Last year, it almost completed 370 homes in Kellystown in Clonsilla, Dublin, which has potential for a further 400 homes.

Speaking to the reporter Killian Woods from the Business Post, Castlethorn's MD, Ronan Columb, said water and electricity are the biggest issues for them and the entire industry. On all the developer's sites, there is either an electricity problem or a water problem. He singled out the east coast, saying the infrastructure on the eastern seaboard "isn't robust enough to take additional units". This is slowing down building. The article mentioned the site in Drogheda where the 1,400 units are planned. Even though several hundred of those units are complete, the developer knows it will come to a point, for example with Irish Water, where there is a capacity constraint. Eventually, it will have to stop building to wait for Irish Water to deliver on infrastructure.

I know this is not unique to Louth and the east coast and that hundreds of private, local authority and one-off developments all over the country are suffering due to a lack of infrastructure. It is critical that we continue to invest additional capital in Uisce Éireann to support reaching our new housing targets. We must prioritise water and wastewater infrastructure to deliver the capacity to facilitate housing development in all our towns and villages.

Once again referring to the massive development taking place in north Drogheda, it is mainly springing up close to the port access northern cross route. The first phase was completed last year and the second will hopefully begin soon. National funding for the third phase, though, is crucial. It needs to be secured as soon as possible in order for this vital road to be completed. This will unlock land for the necessary houses to be built because right now there is no access to that land. I realise this is all very cart-before-the-horse stuff, but our housebuilding will grind to a halt otherwise. There is also a need for more affordable houses in these developments given that an entire layer of our younger workers is being priced out of housing. One of the developments I referred to earlier is Ballymakenny Park in north Drogheda, where there were just ten affordable housing units out of 97 available homes. I agree with my colleague Senator Noonan, who mentioned vacancy and dereliction. We have a huge amount of that in Drogheda and all across north Louth. There is no impetus I can see for local authorities to bring back into usage many of the vacant properties they have. We need to really push the vacancy and dereliction grants to get vast areas that are quite empty back into use rather than using new housing.

Let us get our ducks in a row and get the utility services up to par so we can deliver the homes we need for now and into the future.