The Government is signing on with the European digital Covid certificate framework in terms of travel. People can travel now, by the way.

People are----

-----travelling as we speak.

The Deputy knows we are going to be ready for 19 July. He knows that.

We are going to follow through on it.

On the school secretaries, the matter has been subject to discussion and negotiation. The Government, including the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, wants to resolve this. The matter has been subject to a process. We want to resolve it. It is important that it be resolved. On Deputy Michael Collins's points, I will talk to the Minister, Deputy McConalogue. There is a broader programme and the Government has allocated substantial funding for pier renewal and development and will make further allocations i…

I propose to take Questions Nos. 1 to 10, inclusive, together. The Cabinet committee on housing last met on Monday, 5 July. The next meeting of the committee is yet to be scheduled. This committee works to ensure a co-ordinated approach to the delivery of programme for Government commitments regarding housing and related matters. There is significant work under way on these commitments across Departments and agencies, and the committee's current focus is on the preparation of the new multi-annual Housing for All st…

A number of issues have been raised by Deputies, particularly with regard to stamp duty. This was signalled some time ago by the Ministers, Deputies Donohoe and Darragh O'Brien, in the context of the decision to increase to 10% the stamp duty on investment funds so that they could not compete with first-time buyers. This was allied with planning decisions made by the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien. Both measures combined to make it far more restrictive and, essentially, to allow first-time buyers to buy houses in…

We need to move to a different model of leasing. First, the State should own in the local context. Second, I would like to tell Deputy Boyd Barrett that I do not believe the State should be competing with first-time buyers to buy houses.

It is not better-----

-----because it is squeezing first-time buyers out of the market. The real issue is that we are in transition here. We are a year in government. The Housing for All strategy will make this transition from the current leasing arrangements. Some of this is in the pipeline but there is an immediate issue of 2,400 social houses that can be provided through this leasing model.

Allow me to make the point, please. We want those 2,400 families housed. Local authorities in some instances need to develop capacity and land to get into direct building. The leasing we are talking about here is not the dominant form or model for the provision of social housing at all. That gets lost in the debate because one would imagine that every social house is going to be leased and that is not the case. Up to 80% of such houses right now will be delivered either through approved social housing bodies or loc…

All I see, however, is sloganeering, having a cut and objecting to this, that and the other in the midst of a housing crisis.

Take Shanganagh. Does Deputy Boyd Barrett not accept any bona fides? The Government has just approved the Shanganagh proposal, which involved social, affordable and cost rental housing. This year we will have the first major cost rental initiatives and scheme. I want to expand that so people can rent quite significantly below the market rate, enhancing affordability in the rental market for people, workers in particular. We also-----

There were a lot of questions, though. I want to try to do justice to-----

May we have an extra five minutes?

When I spoke in the Dáil I said - I still hold to this view - that a limited degree of leasing has some importance. That was the exact statement I made, which no one has quoted, for obvious reasons. In the long term it is not great value for money for us not to own the property at the end. That is my view. I have said that to the Minister. The Housing for All strategy will deal comprehensively with all these issues, but the key approach will be building for social housing, affordable housing, and cost rental and br…

Generally speaking, lots of projects have not been developed at all and at the moment show no signs of development.

As for the entire environmental approach in respect of compact cities, for example, the agenda there would be to activate brownfield sites to create housing opportunities within cities. However, the costs are proving particularly difficult, and the constant refrain from the sector is that they are not viable from a cost perspective, yet from a public transport perspective and a services perspective it makes sense to try to revitalise inner-city brownfield sites. However, that is proving especially challenging, to b…

I am just saying what people who are in the field building are saying. They say they cannot do it. I do not know whether they are right or wrong. They say they cannot and those sites have not been built on. That is the reality of brownfield sites. We have not had the development recently that we would have wanted. We will look at how we can get a town centre first approach in towns, but in cities-----