Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2025-12-18 ============================================================ Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow I thank Deputy O'Callaghan. I wish him, his family, his Social Democrats colleagues and everybody a happy Christmas. I think the broadcasting issue he mentioned is a matter for the Oireachtas rather than directly a matter for the Government. As the leader of a political party in the Oireachtas, I am happy to engage with other parties in relation to the issue of the Oireachtas broadcast workers. It is hard to disagree with the Deputy's analysis of the situation. I would be happy to have follow-up conversations with him on that. When you started doing the report card and you said you were going to do achievements and critiques, I thought you would give us a few on the plus side. Considering you did not, I will mention one or two. We have delivered in less than a year of the Government being in office a record national development plan of €275.4 billion that can be invested in projects across the country that will protect our country now and into the future, planning reform, rent protection nationwide, expansion of vacant property grants, free schoolbooks, hot school meals, funding for DEIS plus to help our most vulnerable children, the national broadband plan rolled out ahead of time and on budget, surgical hubs, free HRT and the national education therapy service now established. I wanted to reference some of them to balance the ledger. The Deputy is also right to highlight this Christmas that there are still far too many people who are homeless in this country, and particularly far too many children. We had a meeting of the Cabinet committee on housing this week. At it, we heard directly from the CCMA, the representative group with responsibility for representing chief executives of local authorities. I specifically referenced to them at that meeting action 5.7 of the Government's housing plan, which talks about social housing allocations needing to prioritise children in long-term homelessness. It is due back through the Department of housing early in 2026. I urge all of us - I make this as a non-partisan point - with our network of councillors across the country to look at how social allocation schemes for local authorities prioritise children in relation to homeless. I accept that we need to build more social homes, and we will do so, but we are also now providing more social homes than at any time since the 1970s. However, I do not believe we are seeing enough of those homes allocated to children and families in long-term homelessness. Some local authorities have tried some innovative things in this area. There is a lot more work that needs to be done. I say to everybody requiring a home and wanting to see progress on the housing emergency this Christmas and as we go into 2026 that this Government is putting an extraordinary level of public funding behind the delivery of housing. Our new national housing plan and the national development plan show just that. We must ensure that we have zero tolerance for the bureaucracy and red tape that delay the delivery of much-needed homes and the infrastructure to provide them. The national development plan, read alongside the material on the new reforms around infrastructure delivery and the housing plan, will make a real and meaningful difference. We are seeing some encouraging signs in relation to housing supply, completions, planning permissions and first-time buyers. There are positive indicators regarding all of these metrics. However, I certainly do not stand here this Christmas suggesting that we are anywhere near where we need to be on homelessness, particularly in relation to children. The social housing allocation model should be revised in accordance with action 5.7 of the housing plan. That is something I genuinely want to see prioritised in the weeks and months ahead. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-18/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:29+00:00 Sitting date: 2025-12-18