Cabinet Committees Dail Éireann — 2026-09-16 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central In the first instance, Deputy Séamus McGrath raised the issue of qualifying income thresholds for social housing. To make the point more generally, we built 9,000 social houses last year and we will go higher this year. Deputy Boyd Barrett suggests that we want to get rid of social housing but we are building record levels of it. We are building more per annum now than we have done since the State was founded. Let us at least accept that. You can give out about the methodology if you want all-State construction, but we are getting it done. In any event, I would say to Deputy McGrath that one of the issues is that, legislatively, eligibility for social housing has been coupled with the housing assistance payment, HAP. That is an issue but we can deal with that too. I believe we need to increase the income thresholds. There are many working people who cannot avail of social housing right now, who should be able to. The gap between a certain cohort and those who can afford to get mortgages to buy is significant. There is a cohort of people who should have the option of being entitled to social housing. Deputy O'Meara referred to the wastewater treatment plants in Newport, Birdhill and Ballina and the issue of boil water notices and poor quality water. We had Irish Water in. We said to it, at a Cabinet subcommittee, that Deputies in the House are not happy with the level of communication. It said it created a unit within its structure, allegedly, to deal with Oireachtas Members and public representatives. We will go back to Irish Water again following today's session but we made it very clear to it that, up to now, it has not been what is required. It is a fundamental duty of Irish Water to communicate proactively with people with regard to shortages, boil water notices and so on. It has established a unit for communications. I will go back to it in respect of what the Deputy said to me. In regard to Deputy Tóibín's comment about the Central Bank report, I will make the point that Ireland's homebuilding is the fastest in Europe. We have 7.2 completions per 1,000 people, whereas the European average sits at just three. The United Kingdom is behind that again at 2.4 per 1,000 people. Housing completions rose by 40% between 2022 and 2026 and we are one of only five European countries where building rose, while in the rest of the Continent it declined. Ireland has the highest direct spending in Europe on housing by a wide margin when scaled for GDP or GNI. Some €9 billion in capital funding is committed to finance social and affordable homes. Twenty-one thousand mortgages were drawn down in the first half of 2026, up 5% on the same period last year. Nine thousand new-build social homes were completed, the highest number in any given year since the foundation of the State. Employment in the residential construction sector is up 14%. Notices of termination are down 49% from quarter 1 of 2026. Registered tenancies have increased. I could go on. Notwithstanding the Central Bank report, I will say to everyone in the House that we would appreciate their support. Deputy Tóibín may have supported the rural planning guidelines that we introduced to reduce the planning burden; others did not. The apartment guidelines were amended. Lots in the House opposed that, and the exemptions to back gardens and so on to facilitate the building of modular units. That is all designed to deal with what the Central Bank has reported. Accelerated delivery of infrastructure by the Minister, Deputy Jack Chambers, and the critical infrastructure legislation are all designed to prioritise the delivery of infrastructure that can lead to house completions. We want to accelerate planning. We have maybe not doubled but substantially increased resources to An Coimisiún Pleanála and other regulatory bodies to get decisions faster. We will continue to do that. I join with Deputy 'Chap' Cleere, first of all, in extending sympathies on the death of Eamonn Langton. It is particularly sad news. He was a freeman of the Deputy's city. I know the Deputy and he were very close. Ar dheis Dé go raibh a anam dílis. On the Deputy's ambitions for the budget, I will say two things. We had a substantial increase to grants at that time, as the Deputy said, from €30,000 to €50,000 and €50,000 to €70,000, in respect of vacancy and dereliction. --- 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/2026-09-16/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-09-28T05:50:48+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-09-16