I want to raise the issue of planning in Ireland and how we are going about that business. The context is that I met the Planning Regulator yesterday and we discussed policies. He was in the audiovisual room presenting to us. It is glaringly obvious that the housing situation in this country, especially the private housing market, is dysfunctional. Developers are not building housing estates and we have an issue in that we have a lack of infrastructure in the regions and so on. The most significant thing I see happening, however, is that we are preparing county development plans and local area plans and we seem to be dezoning land, or the famous phrase is that we have to follow a core strategy. I have another name for that core strategy. It is pure nonsense. It is creating-----

Which strategy?

The core strategy. It is preventing us from zoning lands to have a supply of lands available for residential development in our towns, our villages and our cities because we have to follow this core plan based on population increase. In most cases, however, we are zoning lands that may not be available at all for one reason or another, we are zoning lands that will never be sold for development and we are zoning lands that may be landlocked. We end up with a situation in which the price of land which is zoned goes through the roof and creates huge viability issues for housing - and we wonder why we have a dysfunctional market. I am of the strong belief that we should take this whole planning process and decide that we are going to make it user-friendly and try to encourage developments rather than preventing developments from happening.

I thank the Deputy for raising this issue in the context of planning and its obvious relationship to housing. As the Deputy will know, 30,000 houses were completed last year, in 2022. That is a 45% increase on 2021. Our target for this year, the end of 2023, was 29,000. We hope to hit that, if not exceed it. In the year to April 2023 some 50,000 homes were purchased by households. Of those, 17,000 were purchased by first-time buyers. There is therefore a growing number of first-time buyers in a position to buy houses. A record 6,716 new homes were added to the national housing stock in the first quarter of this year. That is the highest recorded since the series began in quarter 1 of 2011. Mortgage drawdowns rose by 10%. The commencements are also, thankfully, on the increase: 28,000 homes were commenced in the year to May 2023, 13,000 from January to May of this year. That is the highest level of commencements for this period since records began in 2014. Planning permissions granted for new homes increased by 38% nationally in the year to quarter 1 of 2023. The temporary time-limited waiver in respect of development contributions to local authorities, as well as Uisce Éireann water and wastewater connection charges, will reduce costs by about €12,500 per home, on average.

On the planning side, I take the Deputy's point. At the moment I think the review of development plans across 31 counties is more or less complete. They make provision for about 48,000 housing units to be constructed annually on zoned lands. That shows there is a bit of headroom. I take the Deputy's point that some zoned lands may not be immediately available due to infrastructure issues or other issues with development. As he will know, we have other initiatives around residential zoned land tax to incentivise the activation of zoned and serviced land for housing to avoid it being hoarded. Also, the recent publication of maps shows that about 11,000 ha of zoned and serviced land is available for housing. I think that is about 48,000 units to be constructed annually in terms of the zoned land. We probably need to drill down more as to how much of that land is available, but there is no doubt but that there is a lot of serviced zoned land out there that could be developed and needs to be developed. That is a key focus of our policy.

On the urban regeneration and redevelopment fund, URDF, very substantial funding, about €2 billion, is being made available to enable local authorities and areas to get the infrastructure in place for substantial housing projects. However, a lot of that infrastructural work is taking time, with the various local authorities working in partnership with the private sector. That fund is key.

I meant to say it at the start but on behalf of the Regional Group I want to extend our sympathies to the family of the late Brendan Daly, a man who I met on a number of occasions. May he rest in peace.

I want to come back to the Tánaiste's reply. He said the Government has to drill down into it and he spoke about a strategy for building houses. We all know that the private housing market is dysfunctional. Anybody who is building houses will say that, apart from people who are building apartment blocks in the cities. If you take developers who might be looking at land, the first place they will go is to the local authority to see if it is interested in buying the houses off them when they are finished. I acknowledge that a lot of local authority houses are being built, including in Galway East, but if you take a town like Tuam, we have not had any substantial private housing development since 2007, and Athenry would be the same way. We have bits and pieces happening but we do not have the substantial developments that we need.

We are doing a local area plan for these places and we do not seem to get that we are zoning lands and that the status quo remains. In some cases we are dezoning lands. The other thing we are doing is R2 phasing, which is daft because it means the land cannot be built on or sold as development land, and yet the Government is talking about putting residential tax on it, which I hope the Government will change. There is no common sense in this. If we do not tackle this now, we will end up in five years still wondering why we are not building enough houses in areas where they are needed for young families to buy at affordable prices.

I appreciate the Deputy's points, although I hope the Croí Cónaithe funds - the towns fund, in particular, now provides a grant of up to €50,000 for the refurbishment of vacant properties, and that has been increased recently - will help with vacancy in towns and villages. If the property is derelict, you can get a grant of up to €70,000. There are the help-to-buy and first home schemes, which are enabling people to purchase houses. I gave the figures for those earlier. The State is the biggest actor but I take the Deputy's point that more development is needed in the private sector. I mention the likes of Croí Cónaithe and the cost rental scheme - you name it - because the State is backing every project and every type of scheme with funding and financial support. That will continue but we need a more vibrant private sector market as well. We consistently look at all of this.

If there are flood plains, for example, I understand dezoning if it is not appropriate to build. I am conscious that across the country, some county councils are being told to dezone land, which does not seem on the surface to make sense to me. I mention the likes of Arklow and the Deputy has mentioned one or two places. That is particularly true when we are investing a lot in infrastructure like wastewater treatment plants and so on and since we have 5.2 million people. The Irish population will continue to grow; we are an outlier across Europe in that respect. In that regard, all stakeholders need to reflect on those fundamentals.

Common sense.

It is not that common.

The Deputy loves the phrase "common sense", as do his colleagues.

It is scarce.

It is as if we are all devoid of it but those in the Opposition. I know what the Deputy is saying and I take it on board.