Malcolm Noonan (Green Party)

We all want the Minister to succeed. We are all supportive of what he is trying to do. I served in the Department for a number of years and know the diligence of the officials working there and that of the Minister's predecessor. We are facing insurmountable challenges with infrastructure, including water and public transport. The proposals put forward are welcome in terms of extending RPZs to the rest of the country because there are pressures in all parts of the country.

However, the overarching solution is supply. We would love to debate lots of other things in both Chambers, but housing is the number one issue and will be with us, unfortunately, for some time to come. We have crazy schemes involving Uisce Éireann piping water from Shannon to Dublin. That will simply not work and will take a decade to achieve. Housing supply in Dublin will be stalled in a very short space of time.

We are considering modern methods of construction. The suburbs of Dublin need to be built upwards rather than allowed to continue to sprawl. Other countries are using timber frames. We need to scale that up. Once we get critical mass of supply and the use of timber frame construction, we could get to a place where we are building far more affordable accommodation for renters, in particular, and everybody else.

These measures are a sticking plaster on a gaping wound that, unfortunately, will be with us for some time. We will support the amendments put forward by Sinn Féin today. It is important we support them. We are not doubting the scale of the challenge the Minister and Government face. As I said, we all want the Minister to succeed. It is critically important from all of our perspectives that we can move on to all of the other great challenges that face us.

There are housing challenges right across Europe. Will renters here face the same problems as renters in Barcelona following the introduction of some of these measures? That is something that concerns me deeply. I wish the Minister well. Supply will be the only sustainable long-term solution to allow us to move into a mature rental market where the rights of tenants are respected and landlords can get a reasonable return on their investment.