Cuirim an ceist seo ar son an Teachta O'Connor. I ask about the number of housing commencements in County Cork for the first quarter of 2024.

I propose to take Questions Nos. 60, 80, 91, 93 and 116 together.

Increased supply is key to meeting our housing need and addressing the challenges in the housing market. At its core, Housing for All seeks to significantly increase the supply of quality affordable homes. The plan comprises a suite of priority measures to transform our housing system, seeking to secure its sustainability into the future and support the delivery of more than 300,000 new homes by 2030. This would see an average build of 33,000 new homes for each year of the plan. In the first two years of the plan, we have exceeded the housing targets we set. The targets have been the floor, not the ceiling.

We see this as a significant year in housing delivery. We have commenced in the past 12 months 50,000 new homes, both public and private. We have secured the level of investment required to support this delivery of those homes. This year we are making record funding available of €5.1 billion, the highest in the history of the State. The Government has introduced a range of measures to ensure balanced delivery of homes for private ownership, social housing and private rental. The Government supports home ownership and first-time buyers are buying homes at a rate not seen since 2006, over 500 first-time buyers buying their homes per week, many of them using the help to buy grant and first homes scheme. We have more than 4,000 affordable homes approved through our local authorities and 5,000 homes will be delivered through the Land Development Agency across the country.

Supply is increasing year-on-year, with a substantial uplift in the amount of new homes delivered since the launch of Housing for All in 2021. The most recent completions data from the Central Statistics Office show more than 29,700 and 32,600 new homes were completed in 2022 and 2023 respectively, the first two full years of Housing for All. New home delivery last year was at its highest level in 15 years, 10% higher than the previous year and 13% higher than the target of 29,000. While housing supply continues to be impacted by external factors, including construction cost inflation, high interest rates, which we hope to see reduce shortly, and challenges in the labour market, the outlook for this year and next is equally promising.

Planning permission was granted for more than 41,000 new homes in 2023, an increase of 21% on the previous year. Some 11,200 permissions were granted in quarter 4 alone, an increase of 47% on the same period in 2022. At the same time, commencement activity increased significantly, with more than 32,800 new homes commenced, the highest annual figure for any calendar year in the past decade. This momentum has continued into 2024, and we are starting 1,000 new homes per week at the moment, which is really significant and up more than 60% on quarter 1 last year.

This robust first quarter activity was followed by an extraordinary surge in April to more than 18,100 housing starts. That is likely in anticipation of the end to the development levy waiver, which we have extended for the rest of the year, and the Uisce Éireann connection charge rebate, which will continue to 1 October. They were measures the Government took to reduce costs and make sure schemes on the cusp of viability could start. My friends opposite railed against that. It is important people know they were opposed to the development levy waiver and the Uisce Éireann connection charge, yet a Private Members' motion was tabled the following week where they wanted to reinstate it. It is interesting to note regarding many of the measures we have brought in to support first-time buyers, like the first homes scheme, the help to buy grant and the vacant property grant, that, even though the main Opposition party's spokesperson on housing has said he would abolish them all, I receive regular parliamentary questions from the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach and others looking for me to expand and revise the schemes Sinn Féin says it would abolish. I think its housing spokesperson is in conflict with many of its members, who actually see what is happening and the supports people are using.

I have written to 12 Sinn Féin TDs, including the Cathaoirleach Gníomhach, asking them to engage with their party spokesperson and try to get a consistent and coherent position from Sinn Féin. Strangely enough, I did not receive one response.

Of course not, because it was a stunt. We would not honour the letters with a response.

That flows as well, because I wrote to Deputy Ó Broin recently asking him to publish his analysis of the impact of the abolition of the help to buy grant and first home scheme on house building and new housing supply.

Mazars has published it. The Department of Finance commissioned a report. I will send it to you.

Strangely, Deputies Ó Broin and Doherty decided not to respond in any way to those letters. That is the contrast between what we do and what others say they will do. In the background, other party colleagues-----

Read the Mazars report from the Department of Finance. Read your own Government's report.

Sorry Eoin, I am not talking to you.

I am just trying to be helpful-----

That would be a first.

-----because the Minister seems not to know his own Government's analysis.

The Deputy will have an opportunity in a minute.

The uplift in commencement activity is being mirrored at local level across the country. For example, there were 1,019 new homes commenced in Cork county in quarter 1 2024, the highest for this period since records began more than a decade ago. The national surge in April was also seen in Cork county, with a record figure of 806 commencements in April. While it will take time to see recent commencement activity converted to delivery of new homes, the medium- to long-term outlook is positive. Early forecasts suggest the target of 33,450 new homes for 2024 will be met and exceeded. In the past 12 months, there were 53,000 new housing starts. I will be happy to come back in on any supplementaries on which I can be of assistance to Deputy O'Sullivan.

I thank the Minister for his response. Before coming in, I looked at a few newspaper articles going back to 2023. The hard, raw statistics the Minister quotes are impressive. It is good to see the journey we have gone on. The trend is more impressive. The figure from 2023 is 2,232 homes in Cork, a 16.6% increase on 2022's 1,913 units. In the city in the first 11 months of 2023, there were 1,027 commencement notices, a 25% increase on 2022's figure of 822.

Deputy O'Connor and I would like to reiterate our support for the measures the Minister has taken, including the exemption of services charges, the development contribution levy, first home scheme and help to buy scheme. The greatest endorsement of the work he has done is that in the early months and years of the Government, opposition councillors were turning up to the sod-turning and ribbon-cutting of developments in Cork but obviously it became politically sensitive for them because they do not turn up anymore, such is the extent of the building going on in Cork city and county.

We know there is a lot more to do. There are people who want to buy their own home and are being helped by the Government schemes but we need to further ramp up supply. I thank Deputies O'Sullivan and O'Connor and other Government colleagues for their support for the delivery of housing. That is in stark contrast to the main Opposition party, whose members are serial objectors to new housing developments across the country. In this city and county alone, Sinn Féin has opposed more than 6,000 new homes, social and affordable or private. That is something people will be able to judge. They will see delivery and commitment to house building, while on the other side are those who want to stall that progress.

A total of 3,109 new homes were completed last year in Cork, which is significantly up on the previous year. Given the commencement figures that went through as well, and the delivery of affordable homes, Cork county and city councils need to be commended on the work they have done in delivering affordable homes for purchase and rent through the affordable housing fund. To be fair, they have really led by example in that regard.

The majority of Deputies from Cork city and county would attest to that. To be fair, the councils have been trailblazers in the delivery of units. I commend them on the work they are doing and I wish them continued success in the years ahead. It is, however, incumbent on me to reiterate to the Minister that while many of the things we have said are positive, be it the exemptions for services, the development contribution and so on, the difference between the Government parties and the Opposition parties is not registering with some people, although the Minister has spoken about it eloquently here again today.

I grew up in a social house in Little Island back in the 1980s and 1990s. People's ability to buy their own social home is a fundamental part of what we are offering in government, have done in the past, and hopefully will continue to do in the future. It has not registered with people at home that the main Opposition parties do not offer that potential for people into the future. My message to the Minister is to just keep doing what he is doing. I reiterate that people need to see the difference between Government parties and the main Opposition parties going into the general election.

Deputy Stanton would also like to comment.

I have some facts here that will spoil the Minister's earlier rendition. Cork County Council will probably not reach its target figures until 2026. I will give some actual facts. It was five short in 2022 and it was 161 short in 2023. Even though the Government's own targets are so low that they will not help solve the housing crisis, the council cannot even meet its targets. We have a situation in Cork City Council where more people are coming on the housing list than houses are being supplied. I am no genius at maths but I do know that if not enough houses are built to house the people coming onto the list then the question arises of how the Government will ever clear the backlog already there. It is simple mathematics. The Minister is not reaching the targets and the targets are too low.

The next time the Minister quotes objections, he must remember it is where we have objected when the Government tried to sell public land privately. He should go back to his party leader, Deputy Micheál Martin, and ask him about his brother Seán and other Fianna Fáil councillors who objected to social housing in Cork. I was on the council when they did this. The next time the Minister wants to talk about Sinn Féin, he must make sure to mention the Fianna Fáil objectors all around the country who have objected to planning.

My next point concerns the reason Cork County Council can----

Teachta, le do thoil

-----there is a whole issue of they will not let people on the homeless list in emergency accommodation.

The Minister has to be congratulated for the progress to date in a very difficult situation between economic factors, Covid, Brexit and all the things that have impeded progress not only on housing but on everything else as well. We welcome the success to date.

Everyone will agree that we now need a push forward. We spoke about this recently. We need to push forward and it is possible to do it now. When one gets to a certain stage of delivery it is easier than when one is low down in the production rate. I ask that consideration be given to new possibilities to accelerate delivery in respect of social housing and first-time buyers specifically in an effort to overhaul the targets ahead.

I thank the Government Deputies for their comments. I put it to Deputy Gould that if there were medals awarded for objectors, Sinn Féin would be gold medalists as objectors right the way across the country.

That is absolutely not true. What did Fianna Fáil do with the Clonburris and the SDZ for 8,500 homes but no-----

Teachta Ó Broin-----

I think we should let Eoin come into the Chamber on his own so he can just talk to himself and get all this rage and anger out of his system.

The Minister turned a sod in Clonburris. Then what did the Government do? Just build the homes.

Will the Deputy talk through the-----

The Minister has no answer.

Teachta, le do thoil-----

I will respond to Deputy Stanton first. Water-rock in Midleton is a magnificent development. The previous Minister deserves a lot of credit for that too with regard to the LIHAF funding. We were also able to use the affordable housing fund to deliver homes there. It is a magnificent development. It shows that Government schemes working together can actually help to drive not just social and affordable homes but also the private delivery within those estates. That is mixed tenure, which we all want. I was in Kilkenny yesterday where there are two magnificent developments with mixed tenure. The first is cost rental. The Minister of State will know about that.

Le do thoil-----

They got an extra 30 seconds so perhaps I could just be able to answer this. We see those mixed tenure developments across the country. On the road infrastructure issue, I will raise this with the Minister for Transport. It is important that infrastructure comes up. I might come back in if I have a supplementary response with regard to sustainable compact growth guidelines to be published, which will help in that space.