Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-09
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Jack Chambers (FF), Dublin West

I thank the Deputy. First of all, I will state the facts around what we are doing to invest in housing throughout our country. On the capital side, approximately €7.2 billion is being provided in the recently-published national development plan for 2025 with an additional €4 billion around current expenditure. That is more than €11 billion of State investment for the provision of housing, supporting the Department of housing in that work. What the Deputy failed to mention in her commentary and her analysis is that complementing the need to ramp up social and affordable homes is that we have to have a viable housing market. Everything she says is about a State construction company and is attacking any measure that we make in terms of viability on the VAT side. She has attacked the apartment guidelines and attacks anything that relates to having a functioning market. Many young people living in this State want to own and buy their own homes. They want to have private development happen along with the social and affordable provision we are providing throughout the country. We are making significant progress on the provision of social homes. Over recent years we have seen the highest level of social housing delivery in decades, delivered by this Government and by the last one. We continued and extended the help-to-buy scheme - something the Deputy continually questions - an intervention on affordability in housing. She criticises such things as the first home scheme as a policy, which is another intervention to support affordability in housing supply. What we do not hear from Members on the opposite side is measures needed to ensure we have a viable market for housing.
The State is stepping up when it comes to its role, as I said, in social and affordable housing but we have to narrow the viability gap. The Deputy correctly referenced the report's findings in terms of the high cost of apartment construction. We have sought to narrow that gap with the measure on VAT from 13.5% to 9%, for example, and to increase viability with the apartment guidelines. We have enhanced the corporate tax deduction to reduce the cost of delivery of an apartment for cost rental. We have taken a number of measures to try to narrow that viability gap-----

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:26+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-09