Rural Planning: Statements
Seanad Éireann — 2026-06-10
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Joe Flaherty (FF), Nominated by the Taoiseach

The Minister of State is very welcome. It is always good to have an opportunity to talk about housing and to remind the Opposition about the great progress we have made in housing, particularly in the lifetime of these last two Governments. Last year we delivered 36,000 homes, up 20% on the prior year and record development. In the first quarter of this year just under 8,000 new homes have been delivered with a further 8,400 homes started and construction beginning. It is arguably the strongest quarter in the history of construction in this country since the boom. It is very important to state those facts. We have immense challenges in housing but we are making particular progress in the face of almost incessant opposition and criticism from some of the people on the other side of the room and people who probably have an opportunity to feed into a housing policy in Northern Ireland as well, where they struggle to build houses. That is for another day.
It is important to set out what the Government and its predecessor have done in terms of housing. We revised the local authority loan, we implemented a fresh start component to allow people in second unions a fresh start opportunity and an opportunity to get a loan. That was particularly helpful. We have the local authority affordable purchase scheme, the first home scheme and the help to buy scheme. We also looked at the income bands in social housing and the Minister of State will appreciate that we need to look at them again. We have also introduced cost rental, as well as the vacant home, croí cónaithe and build over the shop schemes. Incidentally, croí cónaithe and the vacant home scheme were vehemently opposed by Sinn Féin and are arguably among the most successful housing projects we have ever implemented, not only in this country. It has been replicated across Europe now. I am waiting to see what criticism they are going to have of these proposals. Sinn Féin will probably not want anyone to build in rural Ireland.
We have also had the ready to build scheme, which the Minister of State outlined in great detail. It is a very good scheme. There is town centre first, town and village renewal and the backyard exemptions. There is no Government across Europe that has done as much on housing as this Government has done.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-06-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:55:02+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-06-10