I want to raise the issue of the housing crisis in County Kildare. There are more than 6,500 people on the social housing waiting list. Many of them are military families and the Tánaiste is their Minister, as Minister for Defence. At the same time, the Department of Defence has stated that 62 houses in the Curragh Camp are vacant or in various states of dereliction, which is unconscionable really when we think about how bad the housing crisis actually is. The Department will say that it is not a primary housing provider. That is true. It is not a housing provider from a primary point of view, but neither is the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science. The Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science is in the education business, but he is still providing thousands of student accommodation places across the campuses in the country both for single students and students with families. The UK armed forces have 47,000 family homes all across the UK. They are looking after their own people. The Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Harris, believes that in order to educate we must first accommodate, and the UK believes that if you want to do national security you must first do social security.

If I could make three suggestions to make things a bit better, first of all I would ask that we change the policy in the Department of Defence and adopt the policy that we had in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s that we accommodate military families on military property to free up the private rental sector, take the pressure off the local authorities from a social housing point of view, and ensure that the military looks after its own. Second, I ask the Tánaiste to give a direction to renovate these 62 voids or vacant houses in the Curragh Camp and allocate them to military families for the same reason. It would take pressure off the local rental market and the local authority. Third, to double down on what Deputy Crowe said yesterday in this Chamber, the Department of Defence should be building its own housing, as it did in the past. If the university sector can do it for the students on campus, why can the military sector not do it? It is the international norm. If I could make one small suggestion, the next time the Tánaiste is driving home to Cork, he should take junction 12 on the motorway and have a quick drive around the Curragh Camp, which is a kilometre off the motorway. He could see for himself the potential these buildings have. He can tackle three crises: the housing crisis, the rural dereliction crisis and also the retention crisis in the Defence Forces. Then he can direct and instruct his Department accordingly.

I thank the Deputy for raising this important issue. He is correct to say that for 20 to 30 years the policy has been to discontinue the provision of housing within the Defence Forces. I want to be very clear on this. The Deputy will have received responses to parliamentary questions from me. The Deputy, Senator O'Loughlin, Deputy Howlin and others have been in touch and written in on this. I have a meeting with the officials next week on the issue. As far as I am concerned, the policy of discontinuing the use of existing housing is over. We are in the midst of a housing crisis. It is not tenable that a policy would continue to exit this area or to allow houses to fall into dilapidation. I received a file recently asking for permission to demolish ten houses. I said "No". We are in the midst of a housing crisis and I do not intend to demolish ten houses. That is why the meeting is happening. I am very clear on the policy. As far as I am concerned, any existing housing within Defence Forces property will now be used for housing purposes.

The precise allocation is a matter that I am going to allow for further discussion and engagement on, because we do have social housing lists as well. I have spoken to the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, who has offered assistance on this financially. In other words, we can work in partnership with local authorities in terms of the funding of this. In any event, it is not huge money in the context of the bigger €4 billion Housing for All fund that we are spending on an annual basis. There are not huge numbers involved, as the Deputy has said. There are 62 houses in the Curragh, but the utilities and the services are in place already. There is also planning permission already, to a large extent. I cannot, in conscience, countenance a situation where we would either demolish or exit from good quality housing that is potentially refurbishable and that we can put back into use. We have an accommodation crisis and a housing crisis. We made it clear when we developed Housing for All, that every Government Department and agency has to get it that they all have a role to play in housing. It is not just a matter for the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. The Government has made it clear that this is a matter for every Department and for every agency, and they must all contribute, no matter how small or incremental that contribution might be, to the resolution of the housing situation so that younger people get a chance to get a house.

I thank the Tánaiste for that very reassuring answer, which is great. Something the Tánaiste may not be aware of is that you do not actually need planning permission to build military houses on military property for military families. It really streamlines the process. I am grateful for the answer and agree that in this country we have changed much more profound policies than this. We have changed laws on contraception, divorce and marriage equality, and they have all turned out to be good changes. They were the crises of the past. The housing crisis is the crisis of the present. In the past, the State could actually lean on the Department of Defence to deal with those past crises, whether it was the emergency during the Second World War, the Troubles in the North or the pandemic. I think it would be very sad if the Department of Defence cannot be leaned on to address the current crisis from a housing point of view. I am grateful for the Tánaiste's response. It is very reassuring and will make a huge difference to a lot of military families out there who are constantly in my constituency office begging for housing. I very much look forward to working with the Tánaiste on this. I thank him for his response.

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue. It is interesting that as we change policies over the decades and so on, we realise that not all that happened in the past was wrong. There may have been issues with the policy, management issues, challenges in terms of maintenance and so on, but the bottom line was that it was all about the quality of life. We are endeavouring to recruit and retain people in the Defence Forces. The response to that crisis of both recruitment and retention has to be multifactorial. It has to be about the quality of life within the Defence Forces across the board. Obviously, the numbers are not of a significant scale in terms of what is there, but the idea of that being an additional factor that could help the quality of life and the retention agenda into the future is something that I am very mindful of.

There are 62 unoccupied married quarters in the Curragh at a time when we are in the midst of a housing crisis. We are spending a lot of money building new houses. I am in agreement. That is what I intend to do.