I will not publish anything for the sake of ticking a box. I have been in this role for six or seven months. I want to ensure that we get these guidelines right, so I have been working extensively with my officials, who have been engaging with their colleagues in the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment. All of the matters raised by the Deputy are being taken into account in the review, which is ongoing.…
TDs / John Cummins
John Cummins
Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage
Portrait: © Houses of the Oireachtas (Oireachtas (Open Data) PSI Licence) · source file
5
questions asked
Oral and written, to government departments
74,724
words spoken in the chamber
74,684 as a minister, 40 as a TD
361
votes recorded
Each Yes, No or Abstained in a recorded vote
3
topics asked about
Across 2 departments
From the Dáil chamber only: committee meetings are not in this archive.
What they ask about
The subject headings the Oireachtas filed their questions under.
Who they ask
The departments their questions were addressed to.
Month by month
Low months are usually recesses, when the Dáil does not sit. The archive runs to 22 October 2026.
Questions asked 5 in all
Dec 2024Oct 2026
Contributions to debates 264 in all
Dec 2024Oct 2026
Show as a table
| Month | Questions | Contributions |
|---|---|---|
| December 2024 | 0 | 0 |
| January 2025 | 5 | 0 |
| February 2025 | 0 | 4 |
| March 2025 | 0 | 6 |
| April 2025 | 0 | 5 |
| May 2025 | 0 | 18 |
| June 2025 | 0 | 25 |
| July 2025 | 0 | 13 |
| August 2025 | 0 | 0 |
| September 2025 | 0 | 2 |
| October 2025 | 0 | 34 |
| November 2025 | 0 | 19 |
| December 2025 | 0 | 1 |
| January 2026 | 0 | 18 |
| February 2026 | 0 | 19 |
| March 2026 | 0 | 21 |
| April 2026 | 0 | 11 |
| May 2026 | 0 | 31 |
| June 2026 | 0 | 8 |
| July 2026 | 0 | 19 |
| August 2026 | 0 | 0 |
| September 2026 | 0 | 6 |
| October 2026 | 0 | 4 |
Debates they spoke in most
Plus 162 contributions in the regular slots, such as Leaders' Questions and Priority Questions. Speech from the chair is not counted.
Asked about similar topics
Not enough questions on record to compare.
Party, constituency and offices
- constituency Waterford 29 November 2024 to now
- party Fine Gael 29 November 2024 to now
- office Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage 29 January 2025 to now
I reiterate that it is a priority in my Department. My officials and I have been working on this for a considerable period of time. I want to ensure that we get these revised guidelines right. I take public consultation seriously. There was public consultation over the summer on exempted development and over 920 submissions were received. I have reviewed all of those so I take on board what has come in. It helps form…
I thank Deputy O'Rourke for his question. Both the Minister, Deputy Browne, and I, and the Government as a whole, are fully committed to ensuring the delivery of housing at scale. Part of that is the continued acceleration of delivery of affordable housing. Over 14,500 affordable housing solutions have been delivered by our range of delivery partners since the launch of Housing for All, including 850 in County Meath.…
I did not quite catch exactly the description of the country the Deputy just gave but, as he knows, there are as many people returning to this country as people leaving it.
In terms of affordability supports, he should tell the 618 individuals and couples in his county of Meath who have been approved under the first home scheme that the support that the Government is providing is not of help to them in getting their…
The Deputy said the scheme was saddling people with additional debt. Some 6,200 persons in his county of Meath have availed of the help to buy scheme.
That is getting their taxes back that they have paid over the previous four years to support them in getting their deposits together to purchase their first homes. That does not have to be paid back. The Deputy's party is opposed to that. It is not putting additional debt on any family or individual.
The first home scheme is bridging the gap to home ownership, with 618 applications in the Deputy's county of Meath, a…
I did not interrupt the Deputy. If he is not going to allow me speak-----
These are schemes that are providing supports to individuals and families to bridge the gap to home ownership.
The same tactics.
I thank the Deputy. A commitment was included under Housing for All to develop a roadmap to implement minimum building energy rating, BER, standards where feasible for the private rental sector. This work supports the objectives set down in the Government's climate action plan. My Department is committed to improving energy efficiency in the rental market and our work in this area is being informed by researched comm…
I cannot give the Deputy a date for that. The matter is being kept under active review. We have obviously enhanced the measures to try to improve the BERs relating to our rental stock. The Deputy is right to say that the ESRI has completed valuable work on this matter. It has stated that four in five rented dwellings currently have BERs below B and the estimated cost of upgrading the housing stock in the rental marke…
As the Deputy will know, a significant scheme, namely the home energy upgrade loan scheme, is in place. It was launched last year and is used to provide loans of between €5,000 and €75,000 at levels significantly below prevailing interest rates in order to try to address the scale of the challenge that has been identified in the ESRI report. As stated, four in five rental properties are below a B rating. We are keepi…
I propose to take Questions Nos. 14, 15, 21, 83, 105 and 112 together.
As I said in my previous reply, this Government is committed to tackling the issue of vacancy and dereliction. The vacant homes action plan published in January 2023 sets out a range of measures and actions being pursued to return vacant and derelict properties to use as homes. In March, the Minister, Deputy Browne, and I published the 2025 progr…
It is the intention that local authorities will still have a significant role to play in the context of the new derelict sites tax by creating the register that Revenue will implement.
There has been an issue in collecting the existing levy. That is why we are moving to introduce it as a tax that will be collected by Revenue. We encourage people to use the supports there and if they do not use them, the stick of the…
As the Minister, Deputy Browne, has outlined, there has been a very significant package of measures announced yesterday to accelerate the delivery of housing and this will be built upon further in the housing plan, which will be published in the coming weeks. I would like to take a few moments to talk through a few of the areas within my own delegated functions.
These are local government and planning programmes, wh…
They are €5,000 in the North.
They are more than £4,500 in the North.
Is Sinn Féin cutting them up there?
I move: "That the Bill be now read a Second Time."
I am pleased to bring the Planning and Development (Amendment) Bill 2025 before the House today. Members will recall the size of the Planning and Development Bill 2024, which was enacted last year. Many of us worked extensively on that legislation, both at the joint Oireachtas committee and in both Houses. While the implementation of this Act is a key priority for t…
I thank the Deputy for raising this matter, which he consistently does. The Derelict Sites Act 1990 imposes a general duty on every owner and occupier of land to take all reasonable steps to ensure that land does not become, or continue to be, a derelict site as defined in the Act. The Act also imposes a duty on local authorities to take all reasonable steps, including the exercise of appropriate statutory powers, to…
The Deputy does not have to shout in order to make his points. We can all make valid points without shouting across the Chamber at one another. It is true to say that dereliction is a really important issue. It is not one that local authorities or Government are ignoring. The Deputy knows full well because we both sat on the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage all of the measures that…
As I said, the Government has put in place a number of schemes to empower local authorities on the exact thing the Deputy just mentioned. There is a revolving fund through URDF call 3 for the compulsory purchase of properties. It is true that some local authorities are doing better than others. We want to mainstream best practice across all local authorities. There are also other schemes such as repair and lease, buy…
I thank Deputy Neville for raising this matter, as he regularly does in this Chamber . His advocacy for Kildare is certainly well noted. As he will be aware, I was in Kildare last Thursday, when I visited the local authority and engaged with the executive team. Much of what the Deputy has raised here in his question was the subject of the discussion we had.
The system of funding of local government in Ireland is a c…
It is the case that, through a decision made in Cabinet today on the LPT model, there will be a significant increase in LPT for Kildare County Council as part of its 2026 figures. That will be made up from an increase in the baseline figures but also from the retention element moving from 22.5% to 31%. It means that Kildare County Council will have an additional €4.9 million in funding in LPT for 2026 over and above …
I have no doubt that the Deputy will continue to use this Chamber to be a strong advocate for north Kildare and the county as a whole. The Deputy is right about the LPT; there is a recognition in the Government of the increased pressures on areas like Kildare. That is why we are saying as a Government, in line with the decisions that have been made by the Cabinet and the Minister, Deputy Donohoe, that we will allow f…