I am glad the Minister's colleagues are here, especially the Minister for Housing, Heritage and Local Government, a person for whom I have high regard. Mr. Michael O'Flynn, the highly-respectable building contractor and developer of more than 40 years' experience, said in an article in The Irish Times by Mr. Ciarán Hancock last week, which should be compulsory reading, that the lack of zoned land was at the heart of the housing crisis. That is down to poor planning. Politicians need to get over the mistakes of the past and start talking to and listening to the people who have experience in home building, that is, the developers who are left and have ability.

There are people here who are talking and talking and have never and will never build a house. Last year, the O'Flynn Group completed 480 homes. Mr. O'Flynn said that the reduction of VAT in building is vital. Developers are overpaying for land in a race to get sites. The national framework is flawed in that it is based on the premise that 40% of all developed land should be brownfield but it needs to be viable and affordable. If a proper economic assessment of that policy was done, it would be clear that it is not possible for that brownfield land to be developed without subsidisation or incentives.

Nothing can be developed unless it is viable. The fast-tracking of planning through the system of strategic housing developments was good but has now become mired in legal reviews and is being replaced instead of being improved. We are throwing out the legislation and that is incorrect.

The banks at present in Ireland are not fit for purpose. People cannot get loans. Homeowners or those who want to be homeowners, small builders and medium-sized and larger groups cannot get access to money. AIB is continuously putting up signs to say it is backing brave. It should be made to take down those signs because they are stupid and very annoying for people who are being taken to hell and back begging for money and loans. They are in the bank looking at this sign saying AIB is backing brave. AIB would not know what brave was if it hit it in the face.

We need to zone more land and to reduce the 13.5% VAT rate. We need to reform planning to reduce delays. We need to loosen the Central Bank of Ireland mortgage rules to allow people to borrow four and a half times their income rather than the current three and a half times. In the past, land prices were 10% of the house cost. Now they could be 30%. VAT in the past was 3%. Now it is 13.5%. A shared equity scheme would not be needed if the Government was not taking so much VAT in the first instance. People think-----

The Deputy's time is up.

I just have this point.

Time is up.

People think that the builder pays the VAT. The builder does not. The VAT is paid for by the end user; the person buying the house.

I do not agree with the Deputy that the shortage of zoned land is the cornerstone of the housing problem. I also do not agree with him about cutting the likes of tax, VAT and so on. That would just go to the developers rather than the householders. The Housing for All strategy the Government is delivering is the right approach to tackling this. Central to it has to be the national planning framework. At its core are three key objectives: better-balanced regional development, more compact development and low-carbon development.

The first objective of better-balanced development is very important. I go around the country to talk to different councils. I was in Limerick, Cork and Waterford and will be going to Galway shortly to listen to what is actually happening on the ground. I spend time with the councillors to hear what is really happening and about what is being zoned and built and about what is not happening. We are still not sufficiently following the guidance of the national planning framework. Too much of the housing is still in the greater Dublin area. We need housing in Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Galway, in particular, but also in towns and villages throughout the country in order that we get a better-balanced spread.

They need jobs though.

That is not against Dublin but Dublin is under such pressure at the moment because so much of the development is happening on the east coast. We need better-balanced regional development.

That will not happen in Cork, Limerick, Galway or Waterford just by zoning ever-outwards which has been the characteristic of development. It will happen by the measures the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, is introducing with the State intervening not just in social housing but also through the Land Development Agency. Development happening around Colbert Station in the centre of Limerick is a very good example of how we are under-using land in the centre. It is not a shortage of zoned land. It is a shortage of good planning and good strategic thinking. The benefit of the compact approach where one goes back to the centre is that it is by nature low carbon. We do not have to keep building out new water and other infrastructure.

That is another key element of what I have learned by going round the country listening to councils. Clare is an example. Why is it that we are not building new housing in those 51 or so perfect towns and villages in Clare that are ripe for development and where we have the schools, the church and the pub? It is because we need to ramp up Irish Water and its investment in the infrastructure within existing towns and villages that would help us to deliver houses in those areas.

The sort of funding that the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, is providing helps to provide some of that infrastructure. In cases where developers cannot make a business case for it, the State directly invests to support some of the projects getting built. That is the way of tackling it, and not by going down the road of zoning everything. That is what happened in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s and got us into a housing crisis. It was a developer-led approach. We do not need to do that. We need a plan-led approach with the State in a central role working with developers rather than for them.

I would not expect the Minister to agree with me because I am right. Builders small and large and developers large and small are needed to fix the problem. It is not the people in government or in opposition talking and talking who will do anything good. However, we need to make the policies. We need to get the policies right. What we have done is put regulation on regulation and red tape on red tape to make it impossible for people to build and make it sensible to do so.

It is like doing away with bedsits. If bedsits in Dublin or any other part of Ireland were up to a proper standard and were affordable for people to live in for a period of time, what would be wrong with them? Absolutely nothing. People realise that now after doing away with them in the first instance.

Mistakes were made in the past but now we have to move on. I say to the Minister, Deputy Ryan, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and everybody in government that without a functioning property industry, they will not have a proper, functioning economy.

We have to get over and realise that wrong things were done by politicians and developers in the past but we now have to listen to and work with the people who are in that industry for us to solve this problem for once and for all. In regard to us to be ashamed of-----

Time is up.

-----or to be slow about saying we are talking and engaging, we have to talk to these people who have expertise. We have to listen to and work with them.

We have to hear the Minister because the Deputy is out of time.

The Housing for All strategy is the right approach and it is starting to deliver results. In the first quarter of this year, my understanding is that some 6,000 houses were completed, built and delivered. In the year to February of the previous year, there were 35,000 commencements. It is not enough and we need to get better-balanced regional development to get more housing in other parts of the country than the east but it is working. We have some control over it because it is State led. We are putting in significant resources and giving real direction to councils and developers throughout the country.

It is at a critical moment in time. Most of the councils are in the middle of their development plans. Deputy Michael Healy-Rae will know that, as I am sure it is the same in Kerry as everywhere else. I stand up in this process for the Office of the Planning Regulator because his office has the right vision and the job to guide those councils to make sure we do not free fall where every council is trying to get as much zoned land as possible. Instead, we need to be strategic and use sticks as well as carrots to make sure that idle land and vacant sites are developed. That is what we will do.

I noticed Kerry was not on that list of counties the Minister has visited. Perhaps Deputy Michael Healy-Rae will invite him to the Kingdom.

I have been there.

I am looking forward to going to Kerry in June. I will look forward to calling to Kilgarvan or any place in the county.

The Minister will be welcome and I will send him to the bog for the day.

We might go out-----

I will knock a bit of the te-spock out of him.

The turf will all have been footed by that stage anyway.

Sure he can load it.

The weather will be good.