Housing is the single greatest issue facing my generation. I acknowledge that the delivery of housing units, particularly at scale, is the number one priority for this Government and rightly so. However, one of the biggest barriers to housing and the building of houses in north Tipperary and north-west Kilkenny is a lack of capacity in the water and wastewater infrastructure. In Cloughjordan, my own village, we cannot build a single house because there has been no capacity in the system for years. In Ballycommon, over the road from me, 32 houses could be built in the village but there is no capacity in the system to allow that to happen. Uisce Éireann must be willing to meet developers on site in areas like Ballycommon so that they can work collaboratively on planning permission and getting houses built as a matter of urgency. In areas such as Cloughjordan we need to see a determined and ambitious investment campaign from Uisce Éireann in infrastructure, with the full force of the State behind it, to ensure that work is undertaken at record pace if we are really to tackle the housing crisis. It is one thing putting in the investment, and we are all calling for that, but we need action urgently and we need the State to intervene.

I thank Deputy O'Meara and congratulate him on his election representing the people of Tipperary North. I wish him very well. The programme for Government contains a number of commitments in relation to this. The Deputy is right that housing is the biggest challenge that our country faces and it is the biggest priority that the Government intends to address. As he also rightly highlighted, there is a number of enablers to build housing. It is not just about housing construction capacity but also about water and wastewater treatment facilities. We are going to significantly increase the amount of money available to Uisce Éireann through the capital budgets that we will be allocating shortly. What we need to see in return is a willingness from Uisce Éireann to make sure that projects that are crucial to housing get the go ahead and that projects that might be seen as smaller in scale are also addressed. I will certainly write to the chief executive of Uisce Éireann about the projects Deputy O'Meara mentioned and ask him to meet with the Deputy.