Finance Bill 2025 [Certified Money Bill]: Committee Stage
Seanad Éireann — 2025-12-09
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Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow

In a housing emergency, you prioritise building houses. The idea that the State can do everything is not true and is not a good use of public money. If the State were to do everything, we would not meet the type of housing that is needed by many people in this country. There is demand from many people for privately owned homes and apartments. It would not be a good use of our resources to constantly say that every single euro needed for housing will come from the Exchequer because that would mean we would not have the same amount of money to invest in education, health, disability, childcare and other areas.
I know it is not related to the Bill, but I acknowledge the point about disability made by the Senator. Only last week, there was a meeting at the Department of Social Protection with representative groups of people with disabilities. The cost of a disability payment is an important issue. It is one we are committed to developing in collaboration and co-operation with groups and organisations, and with people with disabilities. The Minister, Deputy Calleary, was involved in those meetings in the Department.
There is a degree of evidence in relation to this. I have never built an apartment. I am not sure if anyone present has done so. The Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland came out with a report today. It stated that before we started taking the measures in the budget, which everybody on the Opposition side of this House and the Dáil has condemned, that only two of the six categories classified by the society were deemed viable. Five of the six categories are now deemed viable. These are real homes that people in our constituencies will be able to rent and buy.
We have a housing emergency. Everyone wants to build more houses but everyone opposes every single effort that we bring forward to address viability. It is utopian to suggest there is not a need to address the viability gap and to support the private sector. We call them developers and use other sorts of words because we like to think there is a certain tone attached. These are people who get up in the morning and build homes and apartments for our people to buy. I support them in their work and I think these measures in the budget, in the round, will help to increase housing supply. Housing is priority one, two and three for this Government.

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