I thank Deputy Ó Muirí for raising this matter. He is entirely right. Every lever and every stage of the process needs to be expedited in relation to homes, housing and getting the housing market moving. Tailte Éireann tells us that it is working to address the registration backlog through both increased resources but also improved processes. It also makes the fair point that many applications are not in order when they are first submitted. That figure was about 38% last year. There is clearly either a communicatio…

I thank the Deputy for counting how many days I have been in the Dáil. I am grateful to the people of Wicklow for returning me to this House each and every time I have asked them. I never take that for granted. I work very hard for them and for this country. I think the Deputy has been here since 2016 and I am sure he tries his best for his community too. In relation to University Hospital Limerick, I acknowledge that the Minister for Health has been working on a cross-party basis on this issue. In fairness, I ackn…

I thank Deputy Daly for raising this issue. I genuinely appreciate his expert knowledge, as well as his knowledge as a TD, of health services in the west and north west. One piece of work we have undertaken as a Government is we have created regional health organisations so that we can see the full spectrum of health, population, budget and staffing. This should allow us to be much more analytical in making sure that we are putting resources where they meet the needs and demands of an area and the demographic profi…

I thank Deputy Callaghan for her question. As is often the case, she has highlighted an issue which we need to give some consideration to. I am very conscious that in her part of the country, in my part of the country in the south east and in much of the east of the country, we saw significant rainfall over an extended period, with flooding, including of farmland, particularly in the east and south. Thankfully, with most cattle housed this time of year, the impact was somewhat limited compared to what it could have…

I thank Deputy Daly for raising the matter of SNA provision in his own county and, indeed, Donegal. I will certainly speak to the Minister for education and the Minister of State with responsibility for special education on that point and the point he made about the interpretation or definition of significant need and how it is being applied in various schools. I will ask the Minister to come back to the Deputy directly.

I will. I am conscious that the Deputy's part of the country, as well as all the benefits he has outlined, has also produced a fair few Olympians and people who have represented our country with distinction as a result of the experience and training they have had in the water and on the sea on our south and south-west coast. From my time in the Department of further and higher education, I know the benefit of outdoor education. We have to look at education in the round. It comes in many different forms. It is not j…

I note and appreciate the Deputy's work on this and his engagement with the Taoiseach. Indeed, I read his comments on the issue. We are all absolutely appalled, sickened and disgusted at the depraved - and that word does not fully capture it - conduct we are seeing in some of the Epstein files. Like the Deputy, all of us are seeing that many files are being put out with different bits of information at different times. Of course, all law authorities, enforcement agencies and police forces are going to have to play …

I thank Deputy Hearne for raising this. I genuinely thank Dublin Simon Community for the work it does on behalf of our country and homeless people and its advocacy. I note and take seriously the report; I do not dismiss it. I was also looking at some figures which show that 272 new HAP tenancies were created in those 16 areas in December, but I do not take from the seriousness of the issue the report highlights. The Government's commitment is to review HAP limits and levels, to have that completed in the first half…

I thank Deputy McGreehan for raising the point. In my own constituency, I see something similar. Yes, I think it is a statement of fact to say the demographic situation in relation to primary schools might be changing but it is not equal across all parts of the country because there are some parts of the country where the population is continuing to grow very quickly and a lot of that is on the east coast. The point raised by the Deputy in relation to County Louth is valid. We have to start to look at data on a muc…

I thank Deputy Neville for raising this issue. He makes this point quite often and he is right about County Kildare and the population and the need for public services, including education, to keep up with it. The Department tells me that it basically divides up the country into what it calls school planning area levels. It looks at both enrolment and child benefit data. It updates it annually and it is geocoded to the 19,000 small areas across the country. From that, it analyses at a granular level the population …

I do recognise this and I thank the Deputy for raising it. I know Deputy O'Rourke's part of the country is one that has been badly impacted. We had a meeting of the Cabinet committee on climate yesterday that was dedicated to the issue of the recent floods and the impact. The Department of Transport provided an update on that. It is fair to say the damage will run to tens of millions of euro. The message to the local authorities and the Department of Transport was to get on with it in terms of repairs. They have en…

I thank Deputy Nolan for raising the issue of sulky races and making the point in relation to the current laws that exist regarding that. It is important they are enforced. I know the Minister for agriculture is working on animal welfare proposals too. The Deputy is quite right in relation to sulky races in terms of the animal welfare abuses, the abuses of horses, the lack of care for them, and the devastating impact this can have from an animal welfare point of view, as the Deputy has outlined. I pay tribute to or…

I thank Deputy Nash for raising this issue, which he has raised on a number of occasions. As the Deputy and the House are aware, the living city initiative is a targeted measure aimed at specific areas in need of regeneration. It offers either income or corporation tax relief for qualifying expenditure incurred in the refurbishment and conversion of qualifying residential and commercial buildings located in what we call special regeneration areas, currently in Cork, Dublin, Galway, Kilkenny, Limerick and Waterford.…

I agree and I want to pick up on that point around the local authorities. Although I am quick enough to criticise various local authorities on various occasions, I want to acknowledge the speed at which Louth County Council and the councils for the other three areas moved. That shows, as Deputy Nash said, the scourge that dereliction and vacancy are, and in a housing emergency. We are all aligned on the need for this and I am pleased that we should be in a position to designate the special regeneration areas by the…

The Deputy is right that the living cities initiative is just one tool. That is fair. The derelict sites tax will be another. It is my intention to update the Government in March on the policy direction in relation to that. We are working closely on it. There are meetings, at least weekly, between my Department, the Department of housing at official level. It is, as the Deputy knows, my intention to legislate for that tax in the next budget. We have not decided on the rate yet but it will be no lower than the curre…

I thank the Deputy for the question. As he will be aware, the standard rates of stamp duty currently applying on the acquisition of residential property are 1% on values up to €1 million, 2% on values exceeding €1 million and 6% on any balance above €1.5 million. However, in May 2021, a higher stamp duty rate was introduced with the aim of disincentivising investment funds from buying up large numbers of completed houses, usually with the intention of placing them on the rental market. The rate that initially appli…

That is what we do in the budget.

Here is what we actually did. The Governments I have been part of, first, introduced a higher rate of stamp duty. Second, the Government I led when I was Taoiseach and wrote that letter increased that rate of stamp duty from 10% to 15%. Each year, as a result of taking those measures, the number of homes being acquired has fallen. It fell in 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025, and it is expected to fall in 2026. What I am now telling the House, based on CSO data, not my view of the world, is that we are now seeing these ins…

The policy every Minister for Finance undertakes is to review all taxation measures in the context of a budget. That is what we will do this year, as we do each year. We have already shown that we have a willingness to act and to take further policy measures to make sure the intervention was having more of the required effect. The Deputy calls them "vulture funds" because that is a loaded term. We need private investment in the housing market. That is not just my view; it is the view of the Housing Commission. We n…

I thank the Deputy for this important question. There is a wide range of measures in place to protect mortgage holders through the consumer protection framework, but it is an issue on which we must always remain vigilant. I am pleased to see that arrears over 90 days are now at their lowest levels since 2009, at 3.4% of all private dwelling house accounts. We all welcome that after the horrific period people went through after the financial crash in this country. We need to remain vigilant. We have a framework that…