Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent)
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Amendment No. 1 has been ruled out of order.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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The Minister said, while wrapping up on Second Stage, that Supplementary Estimates are brought to and debated at all the relevant committees. As I have said repeatedly, there is one Estimate that is not, even though it nowadays falls under the group of Estimates. It is a small figure that can be buried wherever it needs to be buried. The relevant amount is €2 million. There is no accountability to the Dáil in any shape or form. I have referred to the issue in the Chamber in the past and I cannot even ask questions because they are ruled out of order. That is not the fault of the Ceann Comhairle. I asked the Minister for Finance about it in the past, when it fell under Vote 15, and was told the Minister has no official responsibility to Dáil Éireann for the matter. I asked the Minister for public expenditure and reform and was told that the Minister has no official responsibility to Dáil Éireann for the matter. The Minister was wrong to say that all the Estimates go before committees because this particular Estimate does not.

I am seeking a logical explanation. I was, in 2009, provided with a Whip's briefing on the Supplementary Estimate for Vote 12 - Secret Service, as it was at the time. The Secret Service was seeking a net Supplementary Estimate for €200,000 in 2009. It stated that a Supplementary Estimate was urgently required as the Vote was shortly to exhaust its 2008 allocation. It also stated that funding for the Secret Service Vote was to obtain information necessary for the country and that, given the sensitives associated with a Vote of this nature, information about its operation would not be made public. That is fine, to a degree, but I cannot see the Minister or his officials running around and spending €2 million to find information wherever in the world or paying for that. Who is the Government paying?

At the Morris tribunal, which dealt with informants, a specific mechanism was put in place so there was oversight of informers. That was to ensure that if there was money involved or whatever, nothing untoward happened. There is no accountability in any shape or form. In other countries, as I have said repeatedly, there is.

We are now getting less information than we used to. In 2005, former Minister Brian Cowen gave me a breakdown of the allocation and the outturn. We do not even get the outturn anymore. We are just told the amount of €2 million. That is all we are told. It is hush-hush and nothing more is said. It exists and is obviously spent because it does not come back to the State. Every year, somebody or something gets €2 million. I have mentioned other bits before. Perhaps it is appropriate, or €2 million is being flushed down the toilet. Perhaps this is the toiletry Bill, an Bille Leithreasa.

Perhaps the Minister can help. I have tried every mechanism to address this. We should take it out of the Appropriation Bill altogether or bury it in the Minister's Department's Estimate if it is meant to be there. The Government has buried a lot more funding in the Department. The amount is only worth six bike sheds or 1.5 security huts. It is not a huge amount of money, and I have accepted that. It might be enough to pay for a toilet in the new children's hospital. It is not a big amount of money. I cannot see why it is put up in big lights every year. It is not hidden away. The Government is upfront about it. As I said, "Secret Service" is stated in big letters. We are told every year.

It tells us every year that, for example, the estimate for 2024 is €2 million, the estimate for 2025 is €2 million and the change is zero. There is nothing else. Turning to the explanatory section which outlines public expenses, chapter 14 deals with the Minister's group, Vote 11, Vote 12, Vote 13 and all of a sudden you go to Vote 14 and Vote 15 just disappears. There is nothing. It then goes to Vote 17 because Vote 16 is in a different Department, the Department of housing. Of all the Votes that are allocated in the approximately 300 pages of the document, the only one for which there is no explanation, no accountability to this Chamber or to the committees, is this €2 million.

It is not right that we are told that everything is accounted for, is open for scrutiny and goes before committees, as this does not. As I said, it is not a huge amount of money but somebody should have the decency to explain exactly what this is or who the accounting officer is in relation to this. As was said in the past, and it was quite cryptic at the time, it is very different from what happens in the use of taxpayers' money in the provision of other services. What happens here is that the Minister provides a certificate, the Comptroller and Auditor General looks at the certificate and deems it to be correct and then the Secretary General plays an overall financial control role. If that happens, that means a number of public servants have sight of it, but we who are meant to have overall oversight have no role in it, other than just to turn up here, vote and accept it and say nothing. If it is more appropriately located in the Department of Justice, the Department of Defence or some other Department then so be it. I cannot figure out why it is now under public expenditure and called the Secret Service. Call it something else, if it is not a secret service. There is not and has not been a secret service in this State except for those who are operating Cobalt and others and they are not belonging to this State.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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Is the Deputy sure?

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I am very sure. The secret service ended when the IRB eventually in 1948 collapsed itself. That was the only secret service, or those who thought they were the secret services at that stage. There may have been people operating, as I mentioned, in Britain in the 1920s. That was it. I am not going to delay the passage of the Bill. This is a procedural matter but the procedures beforehand have not been followed. If they had been, then it would not be an issue for me.

Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent)
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I certainly support Deputy Ó Snodaigh. It is hard to say that we are debating this here. Debating is about scrutinising and passing it. The Minister said it is before committees and always accountable. That €2 million can be in this area and we do not know what it is about.

I am picking up on what the Minister said in reply to me when I spoke to him first about the carry-overs and the overruns and then the lack of money for roads and the lack of money to continue planning and development. The Minister tried to say it was carried over to next year. How come they cannot get the €3 million to continue the planning and design of the road from Cloghabreedy, outside Cahir, on to Clonmel, Kilsheelan, Carrick-on-Suir to County Kilkenny and onto Waterford and indeed Rosslare? Why carry over the money if they cannot get the money? This does not make sense. Similarly with pavements and overlays in Fermoy. Many road projects have been cut in County Tipperary this year. The county council was never as scarce of money as it is now.

I was canvassing outside Carrick-on-Suir two weeks ago. The overseer in Carrick-on-Suir just happened to be finishing up. He is a fine, excellent public servant and hard-working man. He said to look at his depot, that he had not a bucket of tar, black top or cement, that he had nothing. He said in all his 35 years in the county council he was never as starved of resources. There was a lovely clean yard and nothing inside. That was in the middle of October. What happens if we get floods and bad weather? They have nothing. We are handing back large amounts of money. The Minister says it is not handed back as it will carry over to next year. In that case, why are we not allowed to spend it this year?

The bridge in Ardfinnan is closed for ten years now, waiting for funding. It was damaged by the flood and we have not a shilling. They are left with one-way traffic, with traffic lights on it. We have tried every which way. About €1.5 million was spent on consultants but no bridge. Cad a dhéanamaid feasta gan droichead?

A local man, Stefan Grace, is a great orator and songwriter. We often hear the song Bridge over Troubled Waters, but this is a troubled bridge over tranquil waters. It has been like that for ten years. As importantly, the Minister said to me about the funding that he cannot account for the costs and the cost increase to private industry. I put that back directly on the Minister because I am in that business myself. The Minister added greatly to the cost. Costs have gone up by about 30% for the county council to get in contractors. However, the Minister has added directly to that cost with the carbon tax. He mentioned aggregate and concrete. The people affected by mica were outside the gate today, trying to meet some of the Government. It is not just mica, it is defective housing. The Minister added directly to that cost to pay for a scheme that is not fit for purpose, by putting a 5% levy on every metre of concrete. That adds to the cost. That levy should have been put on the suppliers of the concrete. Why should the taxpayers be made to pony up here and take the bill again? The taxpayers are great people and they carry wide loads. However, as in the time when we had horses tackled to the cart behind them, the taxpayer is beaten down from carrying the can for all these overruns, all the hookery that went on and the defective concrete when it should have been tested. People want to build their houses in good faith. I built my own house, self-employed and I depended on the materials and good contractors. I got them and my house is still standing thank God.

There is now a scheme designed for the people affected by mica and the other people, but it does not deal with the foundations. It is pure lunacy to think that they can get funding to build on top of a foundation. In my business, if you come to dig a foundation on any site or area and you find loose ground, sand or gravel, you have to put in a raft foundation, to make sure you have a good solid base on which to put a house. Now the Government is funding a scheme for people unfortunate enough to find their houses are crumbling, and the costs of the foundation are not covered. Whoever came up with this or whatever engineers advised the Government to do this, it is utter insanity. It is even in the Bible, if you build your house on sand you will not have a house. Houses cannot be built, with taxpayers’ money and the levy that people are made to pay that is driving up the price of concrete, when there is no proper foundation. Anybody who knows anything about building knows this house would not stand long if the proper foundation was not there. The most important part of any building is the foundation, the same as in any organisation. For building it has to be a proper foundation. It is the same concrete, with the mica, with the defect, that has gone into the foundations as has gone into the rest of the house. It does not make any sense. Any lay person without any technical or engineering expertise would know that.

In that case, I want to rebut what the Minister said that he cannot control the cost. He can. He directly contributed to the cost increases by putting on carbon tax for ten years, passed in the budget. We will not even have a vote on this increase on the carbon tax. Then he put a levy on the concrete, instead of making the big people pay, like Cement Roadstone Holdings, CRH, that are multibillion euro companies that have been found guilty of all kinds of trading irregularities in many states, in Canada and the US. However, here in Ireland they walk off into the sunset.

Those people were out here again today, forced to come again to the Dáil to beg people to try to do something for them. However, it is folly to have a scheme to build a house on quicksand. It is the same as quicksand. The walls are crumbling and the same concrete went into the foundation. I hate to say it because I have trouble with my eyes, but a blind person could see and know that you cannot build the house on top of a crumbling foundation.

It is a shocking indictment. It is more waste on a large scale to fund these buildings - they need to be funded - without funding the foundations. I do not know how anyone could draw up a scheme that would fund the building and would not fund the foundation. The foundation is the most basic part. I lay it squarely on the Government’s door regarding the cost increases. I cannot understand why this money – the Minister said it is not going back; it is going into next year – cannot be given to the road projects that are stalled now. The surfaces are creaking for want of money. In my own town of Clonmel, the pavements are broken up and busted and the whole town is in a shameful state. Why put it into next year? It is only November. I know it is for a special reason this year in spite of the fact that the Taoiseach kept insisting the Government would go full term. We are expected to have these appropriations.

I have to forcefully rebut what the Minister said that they are accountable and that the Government is scrutinised. I cannot yet answer who authorised, oversaw and signed the procurement documents for the bike shed. I cannot explain to the public who ask me at the doors tomorrow evening who authorised and who was the procurement officer for the hut that cost €1.1 million. I am tired of talking to people about it. They are aghast and shocked at the runaway cost of the children’s hospital. Who signed the contract, only the Minister’s own Taoiseach who was the Minister at the time? Now I am told, to add insult to injury – I do not have this fully corroborated – that a similar contract is being used for the maternity hospital. How could that happen? I think Einstein said the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again and to expect a different result. Are Department officials and their multiple advisers unable or incapable of having a contract that is fit for purpose? There is plenty of expertise out there. When former Deputy Wallace was here, we spoke the whole time about a hybrid kind of contract that was a disaster. It was an open chequebook. The result so many years later is that we have no children’s hospital. There are sick children waiting for it. Is the same thing going to be done now with the national maternity hospital? The lunatics are definitely running this asylum.

Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
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I do not want to delay this Bill any further. I understand it needs to be passed notwithstanding the debates we might have about it. It is a little bit odd that anybody would oppose it because this is money we have to have spent to keep the show on the road. We might want to spend it differently or spend more but we need this money to cover the costs of public services and so on that carried us through this year. I understand that the committees scrutinise stuff but not everything is scrutinised as forensically as it should be. It is appropriate to use this last opportunity to question certain things about whether a proper cost-benefit analysis has been done of whether the money is being spent in the best way possible to deliver the outcomes we want, whether the expenditure has achieved the objectives we desire or whether there might be better ways of spending the same money and getting better results. I would hope any government would be open to thinking about those things.

On sports, I did not say €24 million was lost. I think another Deputy used the phrase "it is going back" or whatever it was. I did not use that phrase. My point is that €24 million is a lot of money when I know a lot of clubs are looking for stuff and in many cases are not getting it. It is an opportunity to highlight that it would be a good investment to have a more proactive approach when it comes to supporting sports in the community. I have said before that there is often a bit of a “computer says no” approach when clubs go looking for money. If you do not tick certain boxes, they say no or reasons are found to say no. Reasons should be found to say yes when it comes to providing money for community-based grassroots sports clubs looking for more facilities. It is obvious, particularly given the growth in the participation of girls and women in sports, which has grown exponentially and is fantastic, that there is a big catch-up to be done in the necessary facilities. Even before we had a high level of women’s participation in sport, a lot of the sports facilities were pretty awful. When I played soccer and GAA, I changed in containers on the side of fields. There is still quite a lot of that going on. Given that large numbers of women are getting involved in sport, decent quality facilities are required. We should have them anyway but it becomes ever more important. There needs to be a more proactive approach to giving the necessary funding to provide the best quality facilities for grassroots sports, which are often severely lacking. I mark that as an important issue that should be prioritised.

I will not go on – we will debate it over the next while. There has not really been a cost-benefit analysis. While the Minister responded and I do not necessarily agree with him on some of the points I made, he is not fully responding. A breakdown that was produced by the Department of housing came out in September - in fairness, it was not the Minister’s Department - and it makes for interesting reading. If one looks at the breakdown of the cost of construction of a house, including all the different things, one will see that almost every stage involves people brought into the process from the outside. Of course, there will be contractors and private businesses. I do not suggest they will not always play a role in the construction of housing and many other things, but when we need to build the amount of housing we now have to build and when we have the deficit that we do, we have to be able to do this on scale. Even people who are very middle of the road and a long way from me ideologically and politically say that our private construction industry does not have the capacity. We will have to grasp that nettle. We must have construction companies that have the scale to build tens of thousands of houses and those houses most be affordable.

Part of the reason for the last crash was that even when we got up to 70,000 to 90,000 houses a year, they were delivered at astronomical prices. Banks were lending money to people who could not really afford to buy at those prices and eventually the whole pack of cards came crashing down. We had better not go down that road again but we could because the prices I quoted in that document are not sustainable. To be talking about €450,000 to build a house, €550,000 to build an apartment and €590,000 to build an apartment in the city is not sustainable. We have to find a way to drive down the price of constructing housing. If there is a company of scale, there are economies of scale. The Minister surely knows this as somebody who was the Minister for Finance. I did economics for the leaving certificate, so I know about economies of scale. That is why a cost-benefit analysis at least needs to be done to see if the costs could be driven down. There is a labour shortage, which we clearly have at the moment. When we look at the money expended on trying to recruit, find and train people, we should look at models like the ESB, which in its heyday had a large number of apprentices trained. It was an attractive job. Our electricity infrastructure could not operate on a boom-slump basis, could it? It could not, but our construction sector operators on a boom-slump basis.

We had many construction workers in 2008 but then numbers slumped and we are having a real battle to get people back into construction, partly because of the bitter memory of what happened the last time. We have to make it attractive again. There are many reasons to look very seriously - it is an urgent necessity and we should not be flippant about it - at whether this is an absolute necessity in order to deliver housing at affordable levels and the infrastructure we need to address the major problems facing this country.

This is my very last point and it may be the last chance I will get to say it before the Dáil rises. It is in this Bill and it is about out-turns. I have raised it with the Minister many times. It relates to the problem of the public money that I want to be spent in the area of art and culture, particularly in the film industry sector, but which is still not delivering on the industry development test. It is not delivering the income and employment security the crews deserve and need and that the actors, writers and performers in film and our creative sector deserve.

I was looking yesterday at interesting figures from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, on average salaries in different areas of the economy. The second lowest is €16,000 a year, for people working in the arts. Most people work in the arts are on an average of €16,000. It is a miserable salary. It is poverty income. It is pretty terrible for a country whose reputation, to a very significant extent, depends on our fantastic literary, cultural and artistic heritage that most of the people who work in that area exist on very low incomes and have a very precarious employment situation. We could be doing better. Irish Equity, the Writers Guild of Ireland and the Screen Directors Guild of Ireland have been saying that the Government may be putting money into this area and want to develop the industry, but the money we put into this industry is supposed to be conditional on industry development and one cannot have industry development if the people who are the core of that industry have absolutely no security whatsoever. Many of these creative people just leave and ask what the point is in being a writer, performer or director when they have to put up with such precarity and incomes are so low. They have asked that the public money that goes into areas like film be much more strictly conditional on the producers meeting the industry development test. For them, that means guaranteeing they are not given crappy contracts where they are forced to sign away their right to future residuals, which all of these people used to get in the old days. They used to get residuals, often for the rest of their lives. They do not get them any more, but they are of critical importance when one is on that sort of low income and living that precarious existence.

It is similar for the crew. Again this week, more of these workers were in the Labour Court. They go in and then the film producer company to which the Minister gives money and which set up the designated activity company, DAC, for the films the crew worked on marches into the Labour Court and says it is not the workers' employer. It set up the DAC and received money from the Government to make this film on the basis that it was going to create quality employment and training but then says the workers are not its employees, even though it is obvious that it is the employer because there is nobody else. It got the money from the State. I just do not believe it is fair to do that. I point out to the Minister that many of those people live in his constituency and they have been blacklisted out of the industry because they asserted their right to the recognition of their service for many years. The Government should do something about that. It would not take much. The Government can just tell the film producers to stop doing this and that it will not give them the money unless they recognise the service of the people who are in that industry, acknowledge that they are the employers and stop hiding behind the DAC. The Government should make that change. It would be good for the development of the industry as well as for the people who work in it.

I am all for the expenditure that has been allocated, and for more in that area, but the Minister should make it conditional on giving decent employment, conditions and rights to the people who work in the cultural, arts and film sectors.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Hear, hear.

Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent)
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I have been in construction all my life, with over 30 years of experience, and am still in construction on a daily basis. I start work on site at 7 o'clock in the morning because most of the Departments I deal with do not open until 9 a.m. or 9.30 a.m. I get my day's work done in the morning before I come to work at all. That keeps me in tune with inflation, labour and material costs and all of the different sectors of infrastructure. I try to bring my experience to this. In 2021, a 1,700 sq. ft house cost €231,540. There is a 13.5% VAT rate cost of €27,540 included in that, meaning the cost before VAT was €204,000. Today, in 2024, that same house costs €350,000. It is almost €119,000 dearer for the same house. The person is only getting the same package but paying €119,000 more. Before VAT, that house is €308,000. The Government now places a cost of €41,630 in VAT on the same new house that the person was getting in 2021. How is anyone - teachers, nurses, gardaí or the people who work in factories - going to be able to afford a mortgage for this house if something is not done about mortgage rates?

At the moment the loan-to-value ratio is 90%. That is fine if the market is stable and one is trying to reach that figure, but people's wages will not allowed them to get to that figure. Why not have a 95% loan-to-value ratio? The Government could go to the Central Bank. The guarantee from the banks is 90% but the Government could guarantee the extra 5%. When I look at the maths of it, the Government would actually be guaranteeing nothing in the context of that 5% because it would gather it back through the VAT on the inflation cost. The Government is actually holding the €15,000 extra that purchasers would need. On a house with a purchase price of €350,000, with a loan over 35 years and a 95% ratio, the cost to the person would be €332,000. The 5% deposit would be €17,500. For a family with a combined gross income of €67,000, this would be 24.2% of gross take-home pay. If the Government uses the extra VAT it is taking on the inflated costs, this would cover the 5% we are looking for. Looking over the ratio of mortgages in this country, there is only a 4% default.

This change would mean that people who are renting at the moment and want to buy a house would have the opportunity to do so as they would only have to come up with a deposit of €17,500, rather than one of €35,000. With the VAT rate on the purchase price of the house, the Government is getting that money up front in any event and that would cover the 5%. As I said, houses that previously cost only €231,000 now cost €350,000. For a house with a purchase price of €500,000, a 95% loan would cover €475,000, so a purchaser would have to come up with €25,000 as a 5% deposit. Again, if one looks at the VAT rate on that, the Government is actually holding that in any event.

We should come up with something to help people to qualify for a loan from the banks and cover the 5%. That would allow people to get on the ladder. This is for people who are working and want to provide a house for themselves. They are paying taxes to the Government for working and they would pay taxes for buying their own property, but the inflation costs mean they cannot get on that ladder.

I am a father of four. Two of my sons are saving for a house at the moment. I am a building contractor. You would imagine my sons would have no problem, but every time they go to try to get to the deposit they need for the mortgage, the price of the house is increased.

Then there is the concrete levy being put on houses. It is on all concrete products. Again, we are going back to the person who is working or a person who wants to downsize, having worked all their lives, to allow for the next generation. The tax regime is only hurting the people who work. Why can we not do something to help the working person? The worst off at the moment are the working middle class. They qualify for nothing across the board, but they work and pay taxes for everything. They work and pay taxes for the people who are vulnerable and cannot work. Why can we not look at something like this and use the extra money the Government is taking off them for the purchase of a new house and use a 5% guarantee along with the banking system? Does that not make sense? Does it not make sense for a person who is in finance? There is no risk to the Government because it already has the extra inflationary costs since 2021. This would help people get on the ladder and into houses. It would also deal with the inflation costs. That is what common sense would tell me in the context of the housing market, and it is one way of trying to get people the loan-to-value they want. Looking at all the statistics the Minister gave us and the different things we have, this is a way forward for people.

We also have to look at building houses. To qualify to build social houses, you have to have contracts to the value of millions. There are a lot of smaller contractors that could go in. Let us look at the likes of Mungret in Limerick. The sites are serviced and could be given to the contractor ten houses at a time. That would give the smaller contractor the chance to build these houses rather than going to the big companies. Many of the big companies squeeze out the smaller contractors and ensure that they cannot get on the ladder. The smaller contractors could probably provide these houses to the State at a cheaper price than the bigger contractors and bring a bit of competition back into the market.

Another think to look at is the Central Bank reviewing banks outside Ireland providing mortgages. Would the 5% guarantee by Government that I mentioned not allow competition back into the market, where our banks are thriving after the taxpayers of Ireland bailed them out? Why can we not bring competition back into the country to ensure that the banking sector lends to people? The same people who dug the banks out are now looking to be dug out in order that they can provide homes for the future. If we look at all the cost rentals across the board, any couple renting has to show disposable income at the end of the month in order that they can afford a mortgage, but rent is not taken into account. It is their current disposable income that is taken into consideration, so, again, if they are renting they are caught. We need to do something to ensure that we have a generation of people who can get on the housing ladder, even with the inflated costs that exist. The Government needs to put a guarantee on the moneys it is taking in by means of VAT from those costs. That would cover what we are looking for, so it would be cost-neutral based on the figures from 2021 to 2024. The Government would be helping working-class people in order that they could create a life for the generation to come.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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I ask the Minister to respond to the relevant points that were raised.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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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.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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I wish to say something on the Schedule. I should have said it earlier but given this also will be my final opportunity to speak in this Dáil - although like everybody on the Opposition benches, I hope to be in the next one, depending on the support of our electorate and our constituents - I thank all the Deputies over the Dáil term for their co-operation in how we have debated lots of legislation. Even though we have, at many times, vigorously disagreed, I always respect and understand the views being put forward and fundamentally respect that when any Deputy is raising an issue here, he or she is doing so on behalf of his or her constituents and is driven by what he or she believes is the right thing for the country and the use of the country's money. I hope we will have the opportunity to continue that. Let us see. I thank you all for the past five years of debate and engagement.

Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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I agree with the Minister and I have the same sentiments. I also will take this opportunity to thank the Ceann Comhairle. This may be his final act as Ceann Comhairle. He will be back in here to help us all with the wisdom he has got in that Chair over the years. I thank the staff in particular, for their help in the lifetime of this Dáil and hopefully, like the Minister, we will see him on the other side. The other side of the election, that is.

Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael)
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Hear hear.

Richard O'Donoghue (Limerick County, Independent)
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I thank the Ceann Comhairle as I have probably given him a couple of hairy moments throughout the five years of my first term. Please God I will be returned again. As the Minister said, it will be up to the electorate. We are all here to represent the people who elected us. All I can do is wish everyone health going forward, both those people who are to return and those who are retiring. I wish them health in their retirement. I also thank the staff in all the offices across Leinster House and all the different Houses. I wish them all the best health because health is wealth. Often, when we come here, we are at loggerheads and do not agree with each other, but we are doing it for the right reasons for the interests of our communities, our counties and to represent the people. I also thank the Leas-Cheann Comhairle, Deputy Catherine Connolly, as well as all the other Deputies who have stepped in as Cathaoirligh Gníomhaigh, for all the work they have done. I have the utmost respect for all Deputies and I wish them all well in the upcoming elections. I thank the Ceann Comhairle very much for his patience.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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Thank you very much, Deputy, and thanks to everyone for the kind remarks.

Seán Ó Fearghaíl (Kildare South, Ceann Comhairle)
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This Bill, which is certified to be a money Bill in accordance with Article 22.2.1° of the Constitution, will be sent to Seanad Éireann.