I did not interrupt the Deputy once. We do need good landlords in the system as well. The measures taken impact supply. They do, and if we were to continue to have an open-ended moratorium, then we would see more accommodation lost in the private rental sector, thereby exacerbating the problem. We are focused on increasing supply, which we are doing.

The implementation of the retained review report recommendations, and the Deputy may know this, is currently part of a sensitive deliberative process of industrial relations negotiations under the auspices of the Labour Court. I inform the House again that I commissioned this review that produced 13 recommendations, which we accepted. The chair of the Labour Court wrote to the Local Government Management Agency, LGMA, and SIPTU on 16 June inviting representatives of both parties to attend exploratory talks, which t…

I inform Deputy Brady that the matter is before the Labour Court. I am not going to go down the road Deputy Brady has blatantly gone, in trying to politicise what is a really important issue. We have seen the Deputy's theatrics here before. This Government has a focused, determined, and deliberative approach. I have met many firefighters all over the country. I commissioned the review. We accepted the recommendations. Pay is core to that. I am hopeful that it will be possible to resolve the situation through the La…

Let us allow the Labour Court do its work. As I said, there has been very good engagement from SIPTU and there is a way forward on this. I want this resolved. I have been very clear on that. Remuneration is key to that. No one is sitting on their hands and no one will be sitting on their hands. The unions have entered into the process and I welcome that. Let the Labour Court do its job. Let the court issue its recommendations following its determination and they will be considered very seriously.

It is a very pertinent question. The management and maintenance of the local authority housing stock, including pre-letting repairs to vacant properties, implementation of a planned maintenance programme - which will be important and on which I will expand - and carrying out responsive repairs, is a matter for each individual local authority, and in the main they do that job very well. The quality varies from county to county. Local authorities and elected members have a very important role to play in this regard b…

The Deputy is right that estate management is really important. On Monday, I was in Galway city and county. We have approved in the housing Department alone 300 additional staff in our local authorities this year. Those posts are being filled. I was talking to the chief executive of the housing team in Galway city. Like any other sector, it is taking longer to find and employ people but those posts have been approved. Since the Government came into office, the budgets the Deputy has rightly supported have put about…

I agree. We see fantastic developments across the country, not least in the Deputy's county. We support the ongoing maintenance of those financially. Estate management is crucial. Some local authorities for a number of years effectively got out of that role and are now getting back into it. I have met estate management teams across the country. That engagement with householders in our social housing estates is important and it has to be ongoing. It cannot just be if an issue arises. It is about managing the tenanci…

That is not what I said but I might get an opportunity to come back on that in supplementaries. The Residential Tenancies (Deferment of Termination Dates of Certain Tenancies) Act 2022 was a time-limited intervention which provided for a stay on eviction notices up to 31 March 2023 and deferred tenancy terminations running to 18 June. It was on a phased basis. The purpose of it was to protect renters during that specific period, provide additional protection, allow local authorities the time to bring further emerge…

I assure the Deputy that I am not ignoring anything. I did not get to some of the other measures we have brought in, including the tenant in situ purchase scheme, which we have rolled out and extended since January as a mitigation measure. I have set a target of a minimum of 1,500 homes. This involves converting housing assistance payment, HAP, and rental accommodation scheme, RAS, tenancies to permanent social homes. We will exceed that quite substantially this year and I want to continue it into next year. It is …

There indeed is-----

Some 60,000 households are supported through HAP tenancies right now in the private rental sector. The Deputy just said to the House that we do not need a private rental sector, which is an astonishing remark. The reality is that we are building more social houses than were built since 1975. We will do still more and will continue to do so. In my supplementary response, I will refer to exits from homelessness as well.

What criteria would the Deputy apply? No criteria?

People enter emergency accommodation for many reasons. Every month, we publish a report on it. They include people who received notices to quit, relationship break-ups and new entries to the State. There are many different reasons for that to be the case. It is important for people to know that anyone who finds themselves homeless will be supported by the State in emergency accommodation. Some 5,478 exits from homelessness were achieved last year. Even in quarter 1 this year, there was a 15% increase in exits from …

The Deputy is living in fantasy land. Homelessness is a very serious situation. I do not wish to belittle it in any way. We are doing everything we can to make sure we can drive those numbers down and exit people into permanent housing solutions.

The past decade has seen a significant reform of water services in Ireland. The policy paper on water sector transformation was published in February 2021, which set out our vision as a Government for water services based on the full integration of water services into Uisce Éireann as a single, publicly owned national water services authority. The objective is to deliver a world-class public water services authority that meets customer needs, operates in line with best practice, represents value for money for the S…

I have brought forward the unserved villages. I expect to make announcements in the short term around that; it is the first €50 million outside of the capital programme for Irish Water. I visited Shannonvale with the Deputy. The situation there is intolerable. I have been back to Uisce Éireann. It will provide the stage 1 strategic assessment, which will move it on to stage 2, but the local authority has to engage on this. Some solution has got to be found in the short term for homeowners, whom I had the pleasure o…

Understood. To respond to Deputy O'Sullivan, he is correct that for whatever reason, the local authority did not apply for Shannonvale to enter into the scheme I brought forward. Post Question Time, however, and with regard to Drinagh, I will follow up particularly with Shannonvale. I will reach out again to the local authority. We need to get Uisce Éireann and the local authority meeting on this situation. I would go so far as to say there is a public health issue here, and a very serious one at that, and the situ…

I know that Deputy Crowe has been pushing this very hard and has been very supportive, as many others have, of this scheme. It is new. I announced €50 million for it in 2022. Effectively, we asked local authorities to apply to me in respect of schemes that would not have been brought forward under the Uisce Éireann capital programme. In April 2022 I announced a new funding measure, as an advance stage of the upcoming multi-annual programme for the wastewater collection and treatment needs of villages and settlement…

A number of schemes came in right across the country. If we can get this scheme right, and I believe we can, this will evolve into a multi-annual programme. This is in addition to what we are investing already. The Deputy is 100% correct that our villages and towns across the country can play a major role in housing provision. That is why we have moved forward with the vacancy grants, for argument's sake, the Croí Cónaithe grants that Deputy Canney, Deputy Aindrias Moynihan, Deputy Crowe and others have mentioned. …

The Deputy is looking for a pre-announcement, which we cannot do. All I will say is that if schemes are good, there is no restriction per county, like one or two per county. That is not the question. We received just over 20 applications across the country - not a lot, to be frank, but enough for us to be able, in my view, to start this pilot programme. Where the land is purchased, the planning permission is there and the works are ready to go, those are the types of things that provide additionality above and beyo…