We are simply repeating what council officials are telling us. Is the Minister saying Cork County Council officials are lying?

They say the council has no money for new acquisitions this year. Is the Minister saying that is not true?

That is a fundamentally dishonest way of presenting it-----

-----and misrepresents council officials as well as us.

It is bad form but no surprise, given that the Minister is trying to blame councils.

I thought the Taoiseach's comments on this issue on Tuesday were deeply disappointing. Talking about a dependency culture and local authorities asking for handouts misunderstands the problem. There are three issues I urge the Minister to take into account when looking at the delays in casual relets. The first is the amount of funding per unit is not sufficient in many cases, especially when the stock has been lived in for a lengthy period. The second is the time it is taking local authorities to receive approval fr…

Much of the discussion around social housing acquisitions has been on the tenant in situ scheme but there is also a very real concern the housing first programme will be affected. The programme for Government commits to increasing the targets for housing first. Will the Minister tell us what those targets are? Does he have any concern the restrictions on funding for acquisitions will make it difficult to meet those targets?

The housing first programme is vital in getting single people, in particular, who are long-term homeless out of emergency accommodation. It has worked best in previous years when it was a mix of new build and acquisitions led by approved housing bodies using the capital advance leasing facility, CALF, and capital assistance scheme, CAS, funding mechanisms. There is real concern among local authorities, particularly in Dublin and Cork, that the changes the Minister made will make it difficult to reach the targets fo…

I move: That Dáil Éireann: notes that: — decades of underfunding by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael Governments, in our water and electricity infrastructure, have created significant constraints to the increased delivery of public and private housing; — the Commission for Regulation of Utilities has warned that data centres pose a risk to increased housing delivery, due to constraints in the electricity grid; — Uisce Éireann have said that meeting the Government's revised housing targets would require a significant incre…

On 18 February last, the Cabinet approved funding for 3,000 social and affordable homes. Decisions on these applications from councils and approved housing bodies had been greatly delayed. At the time, we were told by the Department that within a matter of weeks, following due diligence, formal notification of the approvals would be passed on to the councils and AHBs. Some 11 weeks on, many of these schemes have still not been formally approved. I spoke with one builder-developer in Dublin. He has a turnkey project…

I will be sharing time with my colleague, Deputy McGuinness. Statutory planning frameworks are enormously important. They not only set out a clear and legally defined basis for the entire hierarchy of plans, including the regional plans, the city and county development plans and local area plans, but they also provide a long-term strategic framework for investment and delivery of much-needed infrastructure and for housing. Getting it right is crucial and getting it wrong is more than damaging. In order to get the p…

Water is a fundamental human right. It is vital for our families, our communities and public health but also for the well-being of society, our economy and, indeed, our environment. It has been our long-held view that the best way to deliver water and wastewater services is through a public service model where water and wastewater is provided on the basis of need and not ability to pay. Of course, water is not free. People pay for it either through general taxation or through commercial water rates. It is important…

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." The Bill we put before the Dáil tonight would scrap water charges for good and would prevent this Government and, indeed, any future government from charging workers and families for household water. Recent reports in the newspapers that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael were conniving in the background to reimpose water charges by the back door have sounded alarm bells for many people. These alarm bells cannot be ignored. This has not come from nowhere, as the Minister kn…

I have five minutes, if that is okay.

The Ceann Comhairle is okay. I was a member of that committee and I sat through the sessions. It was clear that rather than deal with the very substantive issues many of us put on the table, like water conservation, education and changes to planning and building control, the Government simply wanted a mechanism to reintroduce domestic metered water charges. It came up with a proposition of so-called excessive use. Thankfully, that was not introduced immediately afterwards but we saw last year Uisce Éireann publish …

There is a contradiction at the heart of the Minister's response to the debate. On the one hand, he said that he has no intention of introducing a charge for so-called excessive use but when we gave him the opportunity to demonstrate that by deed and by removing the relevant provisions of the legislation, he refused to do so. Here is the genuine problem. Many people watching this debate will reach the conclusion that the Minister may not have an intention to introduce any form of water charges at this time but he w…

I thank Deputy Healy and his colleagues for tabling this important motion and allowing us to have a crucial debate. Sinn Féin will be fully supporting the motion. While we may have some differences on elements of the detail relating to the policy proposals, we fully support the intention behind all of them. Last Friday, the latest homeless figures were published. As the Minister knows, a record number of people are living in emergency accommodation funded by his Department. The figure is 15,378, some 4,653 of whom …

All of the Opposition have joined us.

Yes.

That is right.