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83. Deputy Joe Neville asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the housing projects that are currently under construction in Kildare North and those which are expected to commence before the end of 2026; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48233/26]

88. Deputy Keira Keogh asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the additional support that will be provided to Mayo County Council to accelerate the delivery of turnkey and direct-build housing projects; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38774/26]

90. Deputy Shay Brennan asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage for a report on the Housing Infrastructure Investment Fund. [48063/26]

91. Deputy Colm Burke asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to confirm the number of housing completions in Cork in 2025; the number of homes completed to date in 2026 in Cork; the number expected to be completed by the end of 2026; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48241/26]

92. Deputy Matt Carthy asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the current income limits that apply for social housing applicants in counties Cavan and Monaghan; if he acknowledges that the current limits deny many who cannot source a mortgage or affordable home any route to a secure home; whether he will amend those limits; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [479…

93. Deputy Barry Ward asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the actions being taken by his Department to accelerate the delivery of social, affordable, and cost-rental housing in the Dún Laoghaire constituency; the number of such homes currently under construction in the area; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48263/26]

96. Deputy Paul McAuliffe asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage if there are plans to examine the availability of affordable purchase housing on council led sites in Dublin north-west; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48184/26]

99. Deputy Grace Boland asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the steps being taken to support the development of age-friendly housing within existing communities, allowing older people to remain close to family and services; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [47608/26]

100. Deputy Aisling Dempsey asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage when he will be bringing forward new rural housing guidelines; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48081/26]

106. Deputy Sean Fleming asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage his response to the latest monthly housing commencement figures; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48047/26]

109. Deputy Cormac Devlin asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage his plans to review housing assistance payment limits; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48096/26]

112. Deputy Tony McCormack asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage for an overview of the projects approved in Offaly under the first call under the Housing Infrastructure Investment Fund; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48044/26]

113. Deputy Brendan Smith asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage if he will consider introducing a specific scheme of investment in water and sewerage services in smaller towns and villages which would enable housing and other developments, taking into account that such locations have in most instances good infrastructure in areas such as education, sport and community facil…

116. Deputy Jen Cummins asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the number of social and affordable housing units built in Dublin south central in 2025 and 2026. [48284/26]

119. Deputy Mark Ward asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the interaction his Department has had on the increase in rents for social housing tenants by South Dublin County Council; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [46878/26]

121. Deputy Willie O'Dea asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage his expectations for new build social housing in 2026; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48065/26]

122. Deputy Emer Currie asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage for an update on his progress toward delivering affordable housing in Dublin west; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [47674/26]

124. Deputy Edward Timmins asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage his views on widening the income limits for qualification for affordable housing; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48304/26]

125. Deputy Malcolm Byrne asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to outline any plans for the development of affordable housing in Arklow, County Wicklow. [47895/26]

133. Deputy Paul Murphy asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the timescale for merging social and cost rental housing over time to form a single affordable rental sector, based on the principle of cost recovery as referenced in Delivering Homes, Building Communities; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48199/26]

135. Deputy Shay Brennan asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage for a report on the work of the Housing Activation Office. [48062/26]

136. Deputy Darren O'Rourke asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to provide an update on his plans to deliver more affordable housing in County Meath; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [46793/26]

137. Deputy John Clendennen asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the steps being taken by his Department to ensure that counties identified for population growth under the National Planning Framework have the necessary housing, water, wastewater and community infrastructure in place in advance of future development; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48129/26]

139. Deputy Cathy Bennett asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage if he will outline his proposals and associated targets to deliver age friendly housing in counties Cavan and Monaghan. [48260/26]

141. Deputy Maurice Quinlivan asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage the plans in place to simplify the process of addressing the issue of void housing and dereliction; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [48179/26]

The Minister for housing has declared a "war on dereliction"; fighting talk and a striking turn of phrase. This is the Government's tactic. It is to flood the airwaves with repeated announcements, deflect responsibility and spin its failures to save face. This week, the Tánaiste sought to pin responsibility for vacancy and dereliction on councils alone, a convenient distraction from years of Gover…

It is good that we are discussing housing, albeit a miscellaneous provisions Bill. I have not seen the Minister's amendments, even at this stage. We dealt with another miscellaneous Bill last night on justice and, at the last minute, we were dealing with a large volume of amendments which were not relevant to the original purpose of the Bill. They were related to justice all right and they were m…

I move amendment No. 11: In page 9, between lines 2 and 3, to insert the following: “PART 2 AMENDMENT OF NON-FATAL OFFENCES AGAINST THE PERSON ACT 1997 Amendment of Non-Fatal Offences against the Person Act 1997 4.The Non-Fatal Offences against the Person Act 1997 is amended by the insertion of the following section: “Obstructing free movement of member of House of Oireachtas 9A.A person w…

Okay. It is good to see. He outlined that close to 1,000 houses have been built and now there is a further proposal for 600 houses. There is a lot happening on the housing front. We just need more and more of it and to keep the momentum going. Deputy O'Meara asked about one-off rural housing. I accept the basic principle that on your own land or in your own community we need people to have the ca…

As the Tánaiste is aware, many young people between the ages of 25 and 33 are leaving our shores. Many of them were in good, settled jobs. These are gardaí, teachers, mechanics and people with different trades. They are valuable individuals, and they are leaving because they simply believe that they cannot buy or build a house for themselves. They say that if they were not working at all or workin…

I thank the Deputy for the opportunity to update the Chamber on what is being done to address vacancy and dereliction. I am taking this Topical Issue on behalf of the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy James Browne. The Deputy rightly said we want less bureaucracy and more assistance. Working to end dereliction and vacancy is a key priority of the Government's new housing …

-----through the reduction of VAT to 9%. That was a significant measure, which was attacked by large elements of the Opposition at the time. We put huge equity into EirGrid and we have put substantial equity into Irish Water, all designed to accelerate infrastructural development. We did that at the very beginning of the Government through the national development plan and through budget allocatio…

I thank Deputy McGrath for raising this very important issue of the upward revision of social housing qualifying limits. As the Deputy will know, the then Minister for housing, Deputy O'Brien, increased the limits in 2023, as I recall, by about €5,000 for each of the various limits. That was to catch up with inflation and increases in social welfare payments, but time has moved on since then. We …

I raise the issue of the failure to regenerate social housing flat complexes. The Government is giving billions of euro away in tax breaks to wealthy investor funds, yet it has turned to our most disadvantaged communities living in substandard housing conditions in social housing flat complexes and told them it cannot fund their regeneration. Does the Minister have any sense of embarrassment or sh…

I fully support the proposals being put forward to improve accommodation for the people living in the flat complexes in Dublin city. I have been to many of them over the years and I have seen at first hand the difficult conditions that people are living in. I will turn to private rental accommodation and apartments. In County Laois, there are 5,600 households who are living in private rented acco…

Everybody in this place knows what a district electoral division, DED, is. A district electoral division is usually half a parish. Everybody in politics knows about them and how they work. When the Central Statistics Office does an analysis it does an analysis of how many people there are per square km. It looks at them in DEDs. In many of the parishes around me, there are approximately 20 people …

I will raise a broad range of issues affecting rural Ireland. I will start with one close to my heart, that of rural planning. This is an important component of dealing with the housing challenge. I have worked through four county development plans in Wicklow and made many changes to help with rural planning. There are currently many aspects of it that make it difficult and we must make changes. F…

Under the helm of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, critical deficits have opened across almost all sectors from transport to housing, water, energy infrastructure, healthcare and our digital systems. Successive Governments have allowed dangerous gaps to open between the Ireland this Government claims we are and our critical infrastructure that we just cannot rely on. Under Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the…

I want to respond to a couple of points made by Deputy Fleming. Alarm bells ring for me when the explanation for why we cannot do pre-legislative scrutiny is because we cannot do it efficiently and it might take us six months, when we are talking about a Bill that aims to make processes efficient. I did pre-legislative scrutiny in the previous Dáil when it needed to be done quickly on the housing …

I thank the Minister of State for taking this matter. My question is about central government support to local authorities for bringing vacant and derelict properties across our towns, cities and villages back into use, and specifically the buy and renew programme that has been in place for a period. In the constituency I represent, Dublin Central, there is an absolute scourge of dereliction. Acro…

I welcome the opportunity to raise the issue of the maintenance of social housing in Dún Laoghaire and Rathdown. I am a TD for the Rathdown constituency and there is often an assumption it is an affluent area only. I have to say I have made it my business to make sure those living in deprivation in my constituency know I will represent them in Dáil Éireann as the only Opposition TD and a new TD in…

I thank Deputy Gibney for raising this important matter and giving me the opportunity to update the Dáil on behalf of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Critically, the management and maintenance of local authority social housing stock is, first and foremost, a matter for the respective local authority, in this instance Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, in accordance wi…

The world is quite a scary place right now from the war in the Middle East, including in Iran and Gaza and the West Bank in Palestine, to what we are seeing in Somalia and Russia's continuing onslaught on Ukraine. We experienced hikes in the prices of various goods and services, particularly energy, after the invasion of Ukraine. What we are seeing now is a multiple of that because the Strait of H…

I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time." I am pleased to introduce the Bill to the House. This Bill has a single purpose - to assist the Omagh Bombing Inquiry established by the Secretary State for Northern Ireland in February 2024 to investigate whether the bombing could have been prevented by the United Kingdom's state authorities. Its terms of reference are set out in the Schedule to…

I thank the Deputy for her question in relation to this matter. Supporting individuals and families who are experiencing or are at risk of experiencing homelessness, including victims and survivors of domestic abuse, is very much a priority for me, my Department and the Government. The response to domestic, sexual and gender-based violence is a cross-departmental multi-agency issue, with the Depar…

Again, I thank the Deputy for the points he has raised. Targeted migration is essential for sectors, such as housing. It does not worsen the housing challenge that we are presented with. Through controlled and skilled-based migration into sectors such as construction, engineering and housing delivery, it directly increases our housing supply. That is reflective of the example where access to quali…

I support the Bill. I have known the Minister of State a good while, but whoever wrote his speech has never pulled a calf or brought lambs. I will tell him one thing; you would wonder what we are listening to compared with what we are talking about. He talked about the CAP strategic plan. The fact about the new CAP and Food Vision 2030 is that at this moment, farmers around the country are facing …

We have no way of scrutinising a number of the amendments, particularly the amendment I tabled on section 1, which we are discussing now. I would have thought that amendment No. 1 was eminently sensible. I would have hoped that the Minister was willing to put forward a stipulation that would have stated the Bill would not come into operation until he can assure the House that the Department has th…

I thank Aontú for tabling this motion. It is well put together, well thought out and well planned. I have mentioned these issues in the House on a number of occasions and brought them up when I was a member of Cork City Council regularly. Speaking of Cork City Council, 2009, the Minister of State may recall, is when Cork nearly drowned after the rivers burst their banks, waters in the dam had to b…

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the recently published Kenova report. I pay tribute to Jon Boutcher, Iain Livingstone and the Operation Kenova team. Their work was victim-centred and groundbreaking. They have proven that an ECHR-compliant investigation into a Troubles-related incident is possible, despite decades of denial and obstruction by successive British Governments. I will speak to va…