I thank you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, and congratulate you on your elevation to high office. It is well deserved. The starting point, which the Minister of State will have to accept, is that house prices, rents and homelessness have skyrocketed. He cannot argue with that. A total of 51 people were homeless in County Laois in February. House prices have gone up 11.6%. The number of new homes is down. The number of new homes was down last year and 10,000 fewer than the Government parties promised during the election campaign. We have a housing crisis but is not being treated as a crisis by Government. Average rents across the State are €1,956 per month. That is a month's wages for most people and that is 43% higher than 2020. We have 143,000 on social housing waiting lists and the current overall housing shortage, according to the Housing Commission and not according to us, is 235,000. Tens of thousands of couples and families are just above the income threshold for social housing, which is €35,000 in Laois. The Government is not looking after this cohort of people who are on between €35,000 and €50,000 or €60,000. They cannot get a mortgage or a local authority loan. It is a real problem. Some of them are over the age of 40 or 45 so they cannot get private finance. We have to gear up the cost-rental model for those people. I appeal to the Minister of State to do that and I say that in a constructive way because they are trapped forever in private rental accommodation and they will be pensioner renters. This will be a real problem in the years to come. The Government needs to enact the emergency measures that are called for in the public interest to create a State housing bond. The credit unions have been saying for years that they have a lot of money on deposit that can be used to build housing. There is potentially €160 billion in savings, much of which could be used for housing schemes. They could be used for affordable purchase and cost-rental schemes and they do not all have to be used for social housing. One of the proposals we need to examine is making finance available to small builders to build schemes in small towns such as Mountrath and Rathdowney and in some of the larger towns such as Mountmellick and Portarlington along with Portlaoise, Graiguecullen and Ballylynan.

Sentiment score: 0.03

Some of those towns have the capacity to add on small schemes. If builders got low-interest finance they could use for that, it could be done. Why has the State not implemented the recommendations of the Kenny report from 1973, published 52 years ago? If I recall, it was actually commissioned by a Fine Gael-Labour Government and Mr. Justice Kenny set out very clearly how to keep land prices down such that development land would only be 25% above the market value of agricultural land or there would be an 80% windfall tax on the profits of development land. We have to take bold measures to force down the price of land. The Minister of State may balk at that, but can something be done in between that? We have to reduce the cost of land for building. We also need to reduce the cost of building by mass producing. As I said last week, we need somewhere between eight and ten plans for the different types of households and household needs; large families, small families, people with disabilities, pensioners and so on. Those plans need to be used by all the local authorities for affordable housing, cost-rental and social housing. Do we really believe that people who need an affordable house to buy or a cost-rental house care if the house they are living in in County Donegal is the same as one in County Laois or Coutry Kerry or wherever else? No, they do not. I certainly would not. That is how we mass produced previously. We need to go back to doing this. The same plans can be used. I would like the Minister and Minister of State to listen to this. When we are starting with a blank canvas on all housing schemes, the architectural fees are between 10% and 15% according to senior local authority officials. That needs to stop. The same plans will suffice and we need to use them. I appeal to the Government to do that. We need to mass produce, reduce the costs and speed up delivery.

Sentiment score: 0.09

That would be helpful.

Sentiment score: 0.42