I thank the Deputy for those follow-up questions. There are opportunities now to open up parts of the country that we feared might have been closed forever. Those opportunities are not the result of the emergency alone. The national planning framework that we agreed included that sort of spatial planning and getting people back to parts of the country that we feared were, and indeed were, in decline. The broadband plan that we brought forward was very much a part of that, intending to connect every part of the coun…

I thank the Deputy for his contribution and his questions. We have used every mechanism available to us to try to increase the number of new homes being built. That is the reason we spent more money last year than had been spent as a State in any of the previous years, and that includes the boom years when we were building far too many houses. It shows the scale at which delivery is now happening in terms of public housing and the taxpayers' money that is going towards that. To answer some of the Deputy's specific …

I thank the Deputy for his questions. On the quality of emergency accommodation, we brought in a new quality standards framework last summer, which was put together with the NGOs and local authorities and rolled out across Dublin. It is now to become the national standard. What we have seen in this crisis, because we have decongregated heavily congregated settings, is outcomes for individuals in those new settings that are far superior to what was there before. The feedback I got yesterday in my latest engagement w…

With regard to public land being only for public housing, some of the sites we have as public land are huge. For example, the Central Mental Hospital site in Dundrum is massive. I do not think it is fair that the people who would not be able to avail of a particular scheme would not be able to buy a new home that might be built there. As many as 2,500 new homes could be on that great site when it is finally developed and mix is important. These are two reasons I believe the policy we have currently on the approach …

I thank the Deputy for the follow-up questions. On the overcrowding point, I am aware additional accommodation has been secured for those working in the health sector who not only need to self-isolate but need to separate from the people they are living with because of the work they do. If the Deputy is aware of any case of someone who has not been able to secure this type of accommodation please let me know and I will make sure they get to the Minister for Health. We will have a proper, fuller debate on housing in…

I thank Deputy Boyd Barrett for those questions. I also thank the Deputy for acknowledging the good measures that have been taken. From talking to those on the front lines, in the NGOs and in the local authorities I know they are doing everything they can. It is admirable. They did it anyway all the time and once again they are stepping up in this crisis. As a result of their work there are people safe today who might not have been safe had that work not been done. I do not think we can thank them enough. I am tryi…

I apologise to Deputy Boyd Barrett. I forgot my time limit and I was not able to answer some of the points he made about Brian, Anthony and others. I ask the Deputy to contact me offline if he could. That has worked before in the past. I shall now turn to Deputy Murphy's points about the RTB. Because of what is happening during this emergency period there has been a big decrease in the number of cases the RTB has had to handle. Essentially, we have been able to protect people in their homes due to a decision this O…

It is not my view that people's rights are being infringed by these temporary measures, and they are temporary and are happening based on the health advice we have at the moment because of the current pandemic.

I do not like to comment on matters unless I have had a proper chance to think them through so I might not respond as directly as I would like to on the matters the Deputy raised about the banks. I made a comment to Deputy Ó Ríordáin about my experience with the banks in the banking inquiry where they told us their culture had changed and what subsequently emerged had been happening in the banks. The Deputy's suggestion of referring what is happening to the Irish Banking Culture Board is an interesting one and I wo…

This is the first time I have ever been asked about military accommodation. It is not something the Department deals with as it comes under the remit of the Department of Defence. We have been looking at different barracks in Dublin city, which have large tracts of land, and wondering about what uses they may or may not have if the military were to give them up or whether there could be shared use of that land to provide more housing. In such a scenario it would make perfect sense that some of the housing would be …

The Deputy will not know this but my grandfather is an O'Sullivan from Adrigole. I know the area well enough, but not as well as I would like. I was due to go down there again to look at social housing provision in Castletownbere and on Bere Island and to see how we could use public money to help repopulate parts of our country in line with the national planning framework and what we want to do in the broadband plan. I will have to refer back to the Deputy on the Bandon and Dunmanway sites. I do not want to give hi…

I thank the Deputy for his questions. While An Bord Pleanála falls under my Department, its judgments are independent of me. I cannot get involved in its judgments or decisions. I do not agree with the Deputy's interpretation of Project Ireland 2040 and the national planning framework. Further iterations of the regional spatial and economic strategies have been agreed. It is a matter of how they will be implemented in development plans. Every local authority must be in line with them. What we will see in this regar…

I thank the Deputy for his questions. No doubt there will be lessons that Departments can share with others. We have experts working in health, in homelessness, in care provision, in different types of treatments, and in the provision of food, all of these things. It is one of the benefits we have in the public sector, in that there is real expertise there and they really have led the way. I think back to the end of January and February and a lot of people were sceptical about what Covid-19 might mean in reality an…

The short-term letting, as the Deputy said, is absolutely crucial, as is the further regulation and keeping as many units of accommodation as we can.

Deputy McNamara is very welcome back to the Dáil. I have not had an opportunity to speak to him either. I agree with the point on the difficulty in bringing derelict homes up to the right standard for living in. We can make changes here, of course we can. We need to be careful that in making those changes we are then not criticised for lowering standards, but it makes absolutely no sense if the only choice - it is not really a choice - people feel they have is that they must leave a home vacant, derelict or going d…