Ar dtús báire, ní aontaím leis an Teachta. Cuirim fáilte roimh na cuairteoirí in Áiléar na gCuairteoirí Oirirce. Is deas bualadh le leo inniu. Ní aontaím leis an Teachta. Admhaím go bhfuil dualgas ar an Rialtas gach aon tacaíocht is féidir a thabhairt do mhuintir na tíre, go háirithe do dhaoine a bhfuil ioncam íseal acu. Is é sin atá déanta againn sa cháinaisnéis a bhí againn le déanaí. Tá muid ag fós ag díriú ar na daoine bochta sa tír. Tá sé sin ceart agus cóir. I disagree with the Deputy's analysis in terms of her analysis that Government has not responded to the needs of people in our economy. First of all, the economic resilience of Ireland has been significant coming through Brexit, through Covid-19 and through the invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the consequential energy crisis that ensued. I recall Deputy McDonald advancing the Liz Truss solution on that occasion, where she wanted to bail out all the energy companies. Liz Truss tried that and look what happened.
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Deputy McDonald had the Liz Truss approach to the energy crisis. She quickly abandoned it as things went pear-shaped in the UK as a result of that particular policy. In regard to the budget, we accept the situation is tough for many households and families out there. Even though inflation is coming down from the high of 2023-----
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In terms of where it was, it is coming down. Cop on. In 2021, 2022 and 2023-----
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We need to be upfront with people here. The bottom line for us is that in the recent budget we have targeted resources at those most in need. We managed €10 for the pensioners. In terms of fuel, we increased the fuel allowance by €5 a week, from €33 to €38. That is an additional €140 over the fuel season. Fuel allowance now covers 26% of households. That is up from 23%. We have extended the reduced VAT on gas and electricity until December 2030. Substantial funding has been allocated for home energy upgrades and retrofitting, which really helps families and helps people. This Government has done more than any other for a long, long time in respect of the cost of education in terms of free schoolbooks at primary and at post-primary level. That was quite a radical move. It took Sinn Féin by surprise, but it happened. That has been a real reduction in costs. Capitation grants for primary, special schools and post-primary went up massively in this budget-----
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-----particularly to help primary schools and special schools as well. We have targeted the resources. Sinn Féin wants to look after millionaires and so on with energy credits. That is its business-----
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----but as far as we are concerned, we need to target resources.
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Sinn Féin has had a few millionaires in its day across the water, some of them quite dubious by the way, but we will say no more about that.
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The other area that we focused on was public services. If we look at the economy now, our expenditure has gone up over 7% as a result of the Estimates in the budget this year. That is significant. Why? Because we are investing in disability services, and we need to. We are investing in child poverty-----
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-----with substantial increases in the child support payment, all of which is dealing with those families who are clearly under pressure and who need our resources the most. Sinn Féin has gone for all universal supports and ignoring those with the lowest incomes.
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We do not need lectures from the Deputy about who she represents or who we represent. The people on this side of the benches came from working-class backgrounds and got elected as Deputies because they are in touch with people and understand the realities out there.
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The Deputy should stop that sort of pretence that she goes on with all of the time. Sinn Féin wants to support those on very high incomes with energy credits.
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That is what she said. We decided not to do that. Sinn Féin wanted us to give energy credits to everybody, irrespective of income. Sinn Féin wants to give millionaires and people on €200,000 an energy credit. We have said that we will give child support payments the biggest increase. Children over 12 will get €16 extra a week out of this budget up to €78 a week. Children under 12 will get an increase of €8 up to €58 a week. Job seeker's benefit allowance has been increased by €10 per week, as have State pensions and so on. There has also been investment in public services in terms of education, health and disability. Yes, we made choices.
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The Deputy had her chance to speak. We made our choices. We prioritised services for people.
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I 100% reject Deputy Bacik's false narrative on the Government's position on housing and her vagueness about the Labour Party's position. I sum up the Labour Party's housing policy and the attitude of its members to housing as: whatever the Government proposes, we oppose.
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It is extraordinary-----
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----that the Deputy gave a big opening critique of overall Government policy and then zeroed in on apartment standards because her party opposes that decision. That is all the Labour Party can do. The Deputy told an untruth when she said that the Government has no social housing targets. She knows full well that the housing plan is very clear-----
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Deputy Bacik did say that. She said that we had no social housing plans. The housing plan states that we will deliver 12,000 new social homes every year over the lifetime of the plan. We have significantly transformed the scale and pace of social housing delivery over the past five years. That has to be acknowledged. I have looked at the Labour Party's manifesto on housing. It is so vague as to be unbelievable. It is bereft of any depth or substance. The Labour Party has put no flesh on the bone of any of its proposals. The housing plan has depth and substance. We have capitalised the Land Development Agency to about €8.75 billion. We are talking about a €50 billion plan for housing. In terms of the need for 50,000 houses a year, we will need about €20 billion to be spent every year. The State will not to be able to spend €20 billion every year. The private sector has to be involved. The Labour Party has consistently been hostile to any private sector dimension to housing. We say that the State will continue to allocate enormous sums to housing and to infrastructure that will enable housing, such as water services and the national grid. That is the fundamental big picture about housing. The Deputy wants to get back down to apartment guidelines. We wanted to close the viability gap. We need more apartments built. We reduced the VAT on apartments in the budget. The Labour Party lazily and politically described it as a pro-developer measure. That is not the reason. It is to narrow the viability gap that all the analysts have identified in terms of apartment building in cities. We have done a number of other measures in terms of the reform of rent pressure zones. The Deputy opposed that too, of course, because she just wants to be popular all the time. We are focused since we came into government on doing things around housing to reform the rental market. That is in line with the Housing Commission report, by the way, which called for reform of the rental market. We followed through on that in an evidence-based and informed way in terms of those who made recommendations to the Minister to come forward with proposals for the rental sector. I get the sense all the time that no matter what Government proposes, the Deputy will oppose it. We need different housing types and apartment types for different cohorts of the population who require accommodation and housing.
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I did.
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I do not.
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Actually, no. People are saying the VAT cut will have an impact. The response from the market is quite clear that it is a significant step in narrowing the viability gap to get more apartments built. We gave the Land Development Agency its legislative underpinning-----
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-----and will further add to its role. We have capitalised the LDA very significantly. If you look at the mortgage drawdowns, for example, the percentage increase in first-time buyer mortgage drawdowns has increased significantly from about 23% in 2015 to about 35% today. We are making progress but affordability continues to be an issue. We have a growing population. If we keep on opposing everything-----
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That is what the Deputy is doing, come off it. If we are to hang around, no disrespect to anybody, waiting for this and that institute to get around to building houses, we will be waiting a long time. There has been too much of that in this country.
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We need to build 50,000 to 60,000 per annum. We will not get there with Labour's policies.
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The Government has set a target of 300,000 houses over the lifetime of this plan.
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I am sorry, the Deputy has had her say. I say this respectfully to the Deputy. She uses language about a "radical reset of housing policy". What in the name of God does it mean? The Deputy has never put any flesh on the bone of anything she has ever proposed. She is bereft of policy. What is the radical reset? Spell it out.
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All I ever get from Deputy Cairns's party is, "We're against this, we're against that, we're opposing that and we're doing that", for the past number of years.
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It does not have a radical policy. It is nice language. It appeals to those who, without question, are under pressure, but there is no substance or depth to it.
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Absolutely none. By the way, under Housing for All, we exceeded our targets - an inconvenient truth for the Opposition. The problem was people then said the targets were not high enough.
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The bottom line is the population is growing exponentially and has grown. The pressures are enormous. We need to build at scale and at pace. The housing plan has substance in it in terms of proposals to do that. We did not wait for it. We decided straight in to do, for example, the national planning framework to get more land zoned for housing. Deputy Cairns will have problems with that on the ground and no doubt her people will oppose it where there is extra zoning and so on. In terms of apartments, we are not standing still and just looking at a problem. We come up with proposals and ideas but people from the Opposition will get into the courts and try to stem those. The apartment guidelines are one strand among a series of measures we are taking to get to the volume needed. We have moved. When the Government came in in 2020, only 20,000 houses were being built per year; now it is 30,000-odd but it needs to get to 50,000. That will need a combination of public investment at unprecedented levels, which is provided for in the national development plan and in our budget, and significant private sector finance. The only thing the Deputy has come up with is a savings and investment scheme. That is fine; in a couple of years' time that might be useful. It will not do anything now in terms of funding investment of houses.
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It will not build a house this year, next year or the year after.
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That is about the only concrete thing I have seen coming from Deputy Cairns's party in respect of a proposal. We have provided huge amounts of State funding. We need more private sector funding, particularly in apartments in cities. We have also decided as a Government to invest huge moneys in water services, the national grid, public transport and roads to enable the construction of houses in cities and towns across the country. The issue will be delivering that. That means a more agile and effective planning system, which we provided for in legislation that the Social Democrats opposed. That needs to happen.
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We are zoning land.
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On the scale of Ireland's ambition and the targets we have set, if you compare our housing plan targets with the United Kingdom, Germany or the Netherlands, on a per capita basis, our targets are nearly double their targets in terms of what they propose. Ours are approximately 9.3 per 1,000. The United Kingdom's is 4.5, Germany's is 4.8 and the Netherlands is 5.5. No one matches the ambition of this country in terms of house construction and planning-----
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-----and when it comes to delivery, in 2024-----
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In 2024, of 23 European countries, Ireland had the second highest housing supply per capita.
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Therefore, in terms of targets and delivery-----
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-----we are to the fore across the EU.
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However, we need to do it at pace and with higher numbers. We want to get to 50,000. Genuinely-----
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I see nothing in the Social Democrats' presentation.
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The savings and investments thing would take years to realise funding-----
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-----which is not the immediate issue, by the way.
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The funding is going in. If people could only allow housing in our country----
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-----in terms of the planning process, objections, judicial reviews and the rest of it.
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I do not see judicial reviews as a badge of honour, as Deputy Bacik does. I see them as a problem.
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The Government is seeking an extension of the nitrates derogation. It is a critical element of the economic sustainability of many farmers, many family farms and the broader rural economy. However, we have established a water quality Cabinet subcommittee. There will be a new nitrates action plan and a new plan on habitats and so forth. We are different from other countries in Europe. Our farm system is unique in being a pasture-based outdoor system, with cows based outside 240 days per year on average. That is in contrast with other EU countries that have an intensive indoor system, with cattle not being outdoors very often. It is a priority of the Government to secure a nitrates derogation but to do so in a way that will enable Ireland to meet its obligations on water quality. Farming has improved significantly and a lot of new measures have been adopted by the farming community in respect of climate change more generally and in terms of water quality. Many farmers do a lot of work in terms of assessment and measuring. I have been on farms and in catchment areas where water quality is measured every ten minutes. Many people operating under the derogation have more sophisticated systems in place to try to monitor their water quality. Ireland is strong in food production and we need to move in a direction that brings people with us but also enables us to comply with the various water quality frameworks and directives and to do so in a way that maintains a sustainable food production system, and dairy system in particular. I have discussed this with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen. The EU Commissioner for the environment, Jessika Roswall, visited Ireland on 4 November to witness first hand our grass-based system and the importance of our derogation. The Minister, Deputy Heydon, attended and engaged with the Commissioner. There has been a lot of stakeholder engagement with the Government and Departments in respect of this. Farmers are doing a lot to reduce agriculture's impact on water quality and will be doing more. They will have to do more in that regard. We are looking at a more detailed programme to enable all this to happen. This work is continuing. There is continuing engagement between the Government, the European Union and the Commission about this issue-----
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-----and we know it has to be in compliance with the habitats directive in addition to meeting the objective of the water framework directive.
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We are showing leadership. Our dairy and beef production system is probably one of the more carbon efficient systems in Europe and the world. That is the other side of the coin. I am not saying the Deputy is saying this but essentially the import of what he is saying would be to shut down our farming, dairy production and food production system. That would allow less carbon-efficient systems to fill the gap. I do not believe that is logical either. We should not dismiss - I am not saying the Deputy is doing this, to be fair - the fact that food security is becoming an issue because of climate. I accept the point about complementarity, that there is balance in all of this. To the Deputy's fundamental point, I accept that environmental sustainability is important, and is not separate from economic sustainability, but we are endeavouring to create a pathway to environmental sustainability in the context of food production that reflects economic sustainability as an imperative as well.
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