Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Ceann Comhairle. I also thank all the Deputies who contributed to the debate and raised various issues.

I will begin with Deputy Ó Snodaigh, who raised an issue I am very familiar with because he has raised it with me on a number of occasions. It is worth putting the issue in context. We are talking about €2 million out of the €104.3 billion being allocated under this legislation. Deputy Ó Snodaigh raised important issues of principle. He stated that this is money which, in his view, is not subject to the normal form of Oireachtas scrutiny. He wants to know why and whether any scrutiny is applied to it. This particular Estimate is presented to an Oireachtas committee. It is part of the public expenditure Vote, so it is done by the Minister for public expenditure. However, it is also the case, as the Deputy has acknowledged, that when I am asked what this money is used for, I am not in a position to inform the Oireachtas in relation to it. There is a long-standing precedent in respect of this fund that it is not subject to the normal kind of disclosure that applies to every other euro of our country’s money that is spent. That is not the same as saying it is not subject to any form of scrutiny, because it is. Due to the unique nature of this fund, the Ministers for Justice and Defence provide a certificate to the Comptroller and Auditor General indicating that the money is being used in the way in which it is intended to be used. The Comptroller and Auditor General considers that certificate and then decides whether to provide a degree of authorisation, or not, in respect of it. The Comptroller and Auditor General has provided the latter and has published in his normal accounts a statement to that effect. While I am unable to go into the kind of detail I usually do about this money and its use, it is still subject to oversight in a different way. The outcome of that oversight is published and there is a statement from the Comptroller and Auditor General about it.

On the points raised by Deputy Boyd Barrett, I will begin with the housing issues he touched on. The Deputy talked about there being no need to be flippant. I was being anything but flippant; I was responding to the arguments he made. I stand by my remarks. I made the point that while he can advance the case for the State being involved in building homes directly through a new organisation, which is an absolutely legitimate argument to make, I was simply making the point that in making that case he should not suggest the State is not involved in building homes directly, because it is. It is just done through our local authorities. It is done through Dublin City Council and, in the Deputy’s case, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. The local authorities build many thousands of homes every year. The question I would put to the Deputy, which I am sure we are going to be able to debate at another point, is whether the brand-new organisation to which he refers would take responsibility for the work our local authorities currently do. Would it be competing with the local authorities or would the local authorities be subsumed into this new organisation? My contention is that the best way for us to build homes directly is through our local authorities and if the Deputy wants the State to play a role in the management of land, and I think he is right about that, then we have the Land Development Agency to perform that role, although that is also an organisation he does not support.

Deputy McGrath was refuting, or as he said, rebutting arguments I was not making. I never for a moment said the State does not have questions to answer on the use of the country’s money. I said we do. I acknowledged that in my response to him earlier. I was simply making a point, which I think Deputy O’Donoghue was acknowledging – if I am putting words in the Deputy’s mouth he will correct me – about the fact that there is cost price inflation happening that is not caused by the State.

Deputy O'Donoghue will make the point regarding the concrete levy back to me, and I will address that in a moment, but if he intervenes again I think he would acknowledge that things are happening regarding prices within the economy that this Government or any Government is not in a position to be able to constrain. I cannot determine, and nor can the Government, what is the price of concrete. We have added a bit to it but other forces are going on that are separate to Ireland at present and which in turn are having a large impact on the issue Deputy O'Donoghue raised and which I will come to in a moment. That is the only point, however, I was making to Deputy McGrath earlier on.

I will make the point again because it has to be made. A carry-over is not the same thing as the money being lost. In fact, it is the opposite. If a Department has a carry-over, it ensures the money is there for it for the following year. In the absence of a carry-over, it would not be able to spend the money next year. The reason it happens is, for example, if you have a Department that is involved in building a bridge or road, sometimes the costs fall in a different way during the year to how they would have been planned. That is what is at the heart of this.

Deputy McGrath continues to suggest that if a project overruns in any way, that is due to incompetence or inefficiency. At times, there are issues there that I am accountable for to the House but the vast majority of the time, I still argue to the Oireachtas that our country's money is used in the way in which the Oireachtas intends it. You can see that in the quality of new school buildings that are being delivered, the quality of the public and social housing our local authorities are building and in the impact the national broadband plan is having on towns and villages.

Finally, Deputy O'Donoghue raised a really important issue that is a big part of the housing difficulties we currently face. As the Deputy said, in the space of a short number of years, the cost of building a house or apartment has gone up by a lot. As the Deputy is a builder and is actively involved in this in a way that I am not, I suspect I am about to tell him a few things he already knows well.. I do, however, want to put them on the record of the House because he has raised important issues.

Part of it is the issues I have already talked about on what is happening in raw materials. Part of it is we have certain standards we want met and I think are worth meeting, for example, relating to energy efficiency but which then have an impact on the cost of the home. To pretend otherwise would be to deny that there are trade-offs if we want homes to be built that have a higher energy rating. I believe it is worth doing that because over time it will be good for the cost of heating a home, which will go down. I believe it will be good for our health and for our efforts to get climate emissions down. There is still, however, a cost for it. The State absorbs some of it but the person who is buying the home also has to face some of that cost.

The Deputy went on to ask whether the State should play a role in lending that money to deal with the cost of the additional credit that is needed to deal with the cost of the home having gone up. I will say to Deputy O'Donoghue that is the reason we have the help to buy scheme and is why we increased the value of help to buy, which we did early in this Government's term, by recognising help to buy gives back to a taxpayer some of the taxes he or she already have paid. We only link it to new homes and we include self-builds because if your son or somebody else is building that home directly for him or herself, it is still adding to housing supply and is a home such people are going to live in. The very reason we have help to buy and then increased the value of it, however, is to respond to the issue the Deputy has raised. In the first home scheme set up between the Departments of Finance and housing and our banks for home purchasers of certain levels of income trying to buy certain homes, we have a way in which the State plays a role in trying to bridge the gap between what they can afford and the impact of the macroprudential rules. That is a way of doing it.

As I said, the Deputy has called out a big issue affecting the supply and affordability of homes but we have schemes in place to try to respond to that. I am sure he will have views with regard to their adequacy. He may well argue they should be bigger in value and so on but we are trying to deal with the issue in a way that I have just described.

Plenty of issues have been raised here that are not about the spending of money but which are really important to the well-being of those we are trying to serve. I have done my best to respond to all of them. The final point I want to make relates to Deputy Boyd Barrett who talked about the need to support sporting and voluntary organisations. We are currently making sports capital funding available in very large sums of money and it is a huge effort to do that. It is far from a case of the computer says "No". In many cases, the computer is saying "Yes" because of the quality of applications that are coming in. Really amazing applications are being made by nearly entirely voluntary organisations all across the country. In addition, earlier this week, the Government made available large-scale infrastructural funding, much of which will be going to organisations that are a lot more than voluntary and are running large sporting activities, which are either about sporting excellence or are about trying to continue to support voluntary organisations.

Many issues have been raised, a Cheann Comhairle, but this is an awful lot of money. Again, I thank the House for its co-operation in passing this Bill. Going back to a point I made earlier, even though the amount of debate here today may have been relatively small, these figures have been debated elsewhere in the Oireachtas at some length during the year.

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