Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-06-25 ============================================================ Simon Harris (FG), Wicklow I join Deputy O'Flynn in extending my sympathy to the friends, family and fellow sisters of Sr. Colette Hickey. What an incredible age and, indeed, an incredible life of service and impact on people, particularly in Cork. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam dílis. I thank the Deputy for extending his sympathy to her in the House. I thank Deputy O'Flynn for raising this issue. I do not dispute that it is serious. One reason we decided that for the very first time the Minister of State with responsibility for older people should be based in both the Department of Health and the Department of housing is the recognition that we cannot just have conversations about older people from a policy perspective in the Department of Health. We also need to have conversations about health and well-being in the context of housing. The Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, is committed to this agenda and working extraordinarily hard on this. Compared with the previous one, the last census showed the scale of the challenge here. The Deputy is right to highlight that the number of people over the age of 65 renting had increased by a very significant amount. There is a real policy issue here, which I do not doubt. That is why this year we will be producing a specific housing plan for older people. I will give the Deputy a flavour of some of the issues that we believe need to be addressed. Rightsizing is an important issue and the Department of Finance, with the Central Bank, has put in place a change to the bridging finance rules regarding access to mortgages, which is important for older people who need to rightsize for their own quality of life and health, and want to live in their own community. Not being prohibited by rigid mortgage rules is a positive development. It is why some of the tenancy protections are important, being able to provide six-year tenancies for people rather the uncertainty we have had in our country before. That is why we also need to work specifically with older people on social housing targets for every local authority, and in the new plan, we will be. I do not say this to be critical of Cork. In fact, it is a positive. A city like Cork could really help to lead the way here by becoming a local authority that decides to set targets. There is nothing to stop any local authority from doing this today but we will be mandating it as part of our plan for every local authority to set targets for the number of older people's homes they will deliver each year. Any of us who have been involved in public life have seen what used to happen in the past, where small clusters or estates of homes used to be developed for older people and-or people with a disability. I am not being critical of anyone but that stopped for a while and we need to really revamp and rebuild that. We need better data collection processes regarding older people. We need our local authorities to enhance delivery through improved site identification, working closer with the approved housing bodies too. We need to and will recognise in the plan the increasing number of older people renting in the private rented sector and examine those affordability challenges for older people approaching retirement in the sector and how we, as a Government, need to help to address those challenges. We will be back as soon as possible this year, with our housing plan for older people. We will encompass these issues in that. --- 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/2026-06-25/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-27T06:54:51+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-06-25