The average price of a house sold last year was €426,000. This is eight times the average income at the moment. The average rental price for a two-bedroom apartment at the moment in this State is over €2,000. It is an incredible situation. We talk about the homeless figures and we do not realise how serious it is. A total of 402 people have died in homelessness just in Dublin in a five-year period. Nobody is actually recording those figures in any other local authority in Ireland. It is incredible. I want to raise a couple of the issues that have been brought about by the accelerated infrastructure report the Government launched today. We in Aontú have been focusing on the dysfunction in the building system for many years now. We have been raising the issues of the slowness in planning, permitting, licensing, tendering, and judicial reviews. In those sectors, we are the slowest in the whole of the European Union in those terms. This is holding back the building of houses in this country. This report today is basically like something from "Yes, Prime Minister". Fine Gael has been in government for 15 years and only now realising there is an infrastructure problem. This particular accelerator programme was started last January. Some workshops were done in June, employment of people began in July and it is only now that the actual report is in place. Most of the elements in the report talk about planning, examining, and talk about actually fully implementing those plans and examinations by 2027. In fairness, this is just another layer of slow bureaucracy from the Government. As for some of the powers there, in terms of the judicial reviews I welcome that there is going to be reform in it but hear this, the whole courts system is really slow in this country. Judicial reviews are taking far longer than they should because we are not resourcing the courts. In the planning system as well, the local authorities do not have the staff they need. Regarding An Cóimisiún Pleanála, I was talking to a builder yesterday who has had an application for 100 houses with this body for the past 20 months and no sign of it coming out. Resourcing these aspects are just as important as reforming them as well. I fear that the Government's timeline for this is still far too slow.
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