Can you explain why they weren't released and do you have any indication as to what the numbers are? I can.

Firstly, can I just extend my sympathies to the McGeehan family on the loss of Ciara to her husband Thomas and the extended family, an extraordinary athlete.

I faced her illness with great courage, but I think looking back, so articulate.

But when I never met her, but listening to her speaking, reading what she wrote, there was always a sense of joy in everything she brought and extraordinary.

And no parent should ever have to bury their child.

And just my sympathies to the family.

In relation to homelessness, you know, one person being homeless is one too many and we want to tackle homelessness.

Why was that?

They're inflating the price of housing.

Now, we're happy the evidence shows that they're not inflating.

Without people being able to get those supports, they wouldn't be able to get those homes.

We do keep them under close review.

We don't want to be increasing, making decisions that is increasing housing prices.

But we do want to ensure that people can get those homes.

And that's why the first home and help to buy schemes are really very important.

Now, I have to put it to you, there seems absolutely no prospect of that happening.

James Browne, you're very welcome to Morning Ireland.

Good morning.

Why are you doing this? So I think it's a key point to the normalisation of housing in this country.

We've been through a crisis now for a very long time, but what we are seeing is momentum.

We're seeing housing delivery up.

We're seeing planning permissions up, commencements up, and we're seeing mortgage drawdowns up as well.

But we have an awful lot more to do.

down, Minister?

And on the vacant and derelict properties issue, Minister, how, how many additional homes would the government expect to bring back into use in twenty twenty-seven?

Yeah.

So again, substantial grants there.

And again, I, I, I'm encouraging people to be aware of the grants that are out there.

So we have the vacant property refurbishment grant, where you can buy a vacant property, get a substantial grant to fix it up and, and even more funding if the property is deemed to be derelict.

'Cause the best homes you can have are the existing properties, because when you build new homes, you're, you're stretching a town out.

Obviously, you need footpaths, you need streetlights, you need more ESB, more es-eshkit here and water pipes.

And that, uh, are, are those figures ever likely to come down?

What do you think you're heading towards for 2026? There's only a couple of months left in the year.

There is, but I've never gotten into predictions.

And partially we see for even the... experts, if you like, in this area have constantly changed their predictions, both from when I started and also almost on a quarterly basis.

And I think there are so many Moving parts within the building of homes, we've seen at the start of this year, 63 days of rain, which did impact the delivery of not so much apartments, which were being done on a kind of a more modern method of construction, but where bricks and mortar are being used.

But then we've had a great spell of good weather and an awful lot of that I think has washed itself out and does have caught themselves back up.

So bad weather in December, it could be the difference between two or 3000 apartments or houses going counted in this year or next year.

That's why we went away from targets as well to kind of get away from this, everything building towards the end of the year, then kind of everything relaxes.

think that that changes the nature of almost the labor demand and the labor need, and maybe it opens it up to women, where obviously at the moment it's very much skewed towards men, but if it becomes more manufacturing, almost factory-based

What do you think you're heading towards for 2026? There's only a couple of months left in the year.

There is, but I've never gotten into predictions.

And partially we see for even the... experts, if you like, in this area have constantly changed their predictions, both from when I started and also almost on a quarterly basis.

And I think there are so many Moving parts within the building of homes, we've seen at the start of this year, 63 days of rain, which did impact the delivery of not so much apartments, which were being done on a kind of a more modern method of construction, but where bricks and mortar are being used.

But then we've had a great spell of good weather and an awful lot of that I think has washed itself out and does have caught themselves back up.

So bad weather in December, it could be the difference between two or 3000 apartments or houses going counted in this year or next year.

That's why we went away from targets as well to kind of get away from this, everything building towards the end of the year, then kind of everything relaxes.

think that that changes the nature of almost the labor demand and the labor need, and maybe it opens it up to women, where obviously at the moment it's very much skewed towards men, but if it becomes more manufacturing, almost factory-based

The Planning and Development Amendment Bill, long worded, has been signed into life, but how is that going to speed up housing delivery, Minister?

Yeah, look, planning and development builds never the most exciting topics in the world, but they have a real impact on people's lives.

And when I became Minister for Housing, what I wanted to do was simplify our planning process so people can move more quickly through the system, ease that frustration, but also reduce costs because the more complicated our planning laws are, the longer they take, the more experts you need, and the greater the cost it is on ordinary people as well.

So trying to do that twin track of reducing costs the length of time and the complexity, but also reducing the costs on people.

So the new Planning and Development Act helps, that was signed into law by the president on Monday, so it has been, and it does a number of important things.

So for example, in relation to changes around judicial reviews, retrospectively applying those to the existing acts and to the existing planning permissions.

And that will allow people to be able to move more quickly and give more certainty as well.

Surely that's going to have an impact.

Is there a certain logical re- rationale to that, in the sense that every location might be different, so you should have what's appropriate to the particular location?

But often that's not why those rules came in.

Uh, often it might have been negotiations between different groups of counselors at the development plan level.

It might, different planners have different views.

And it has re- led to a real sense of confusion, and adding cost to people as well, trying to work their way through this myriad of different rules in different local authorities.

So what we're doing is bringing, uh, I think, an end to the Eirgrid lottery, bringing a sense of fairness, sensibility to it, but also clarity, so people know what you can build and who can build in rural Ireland.

And, uh, uh, you know, the kind of things we're getting rid of is arbitrary rules around road frontage, as I said, the number of dwellings on a particular landholding.

What's happening here?

You must surely expect another new record to be published this coming Friday.

And we have the National Homeless Action Committee as well, where all the organisations working in homelessness are in support.

We meet on a regular basis as well.

I don't know what the figures will be on Friday.

One person in homelessness is one too many.

And we've seen a significant number of years where homelessness has gone up.

And I think that very much has to be recognised Everything I'm doing since I became Minister for Housing is about solving the housing crisis, the homeless crisis, and addressing the high rents people are facing as well.

But you're saying that it's effectively impossible though to model, so you're just not going to try?

So this plan on regulating short-term lets, how will it work and when does it come into effect?

So it'll come into effect on the 31st of December of this year.

The Department of Enterprise is bringing forward legislation which will be brought into law by then.

That's sort of Fulcher Ireland will create a register of short term nets and to be on that register you will have to have planning permission.

And what this What I have done is the National Planning Statement, which effectively sets out who can and cannot get planning permission so that they can or cannot go onto that register.

Anyone operating outside of that register will be breaking the law if they don't have planning permission in terms of planning.

And if they're not on the register, they'll also be in breach of Walter Ireland's rules at that point as well.

That's a pretty significant loophole, isn't it?

Indeed.

So m- most people would've received, would've expected to receive at least a, you know, a, a, a very generous pension.

But then it quick, very quickly became clear that the cost of this system was a lot higher than anticipated and was just gonna be unaffordable.

So, you know, then you get the conservatives coming in in the 1980s.

You know, what do they do about this? Well, they cut the generosity of this SERPS earnings related system, and then they also change the indexation of the basic state pension, so, you know, the way that's increasing over time.

But instead of that going up in line with average earnings, that only increases in line with prices.

So, you know, that works.

Yeah.

So how can we believe you now when you say you'll end the housing crisis?

So the Department of Finance came out with a report called Future 40.

And it was very much was suggesting that the housing crisis would continue for a longer time.

But it was based on a no change policy.

And I absolutely not going to accept any situation where we don't make changes.

And that since I've become Minister for Housing, everything I've been doing is about making those necessary changes to bring about an acceleration of housing delivery so people can have the homes that they so desperately need it.

and in their local communities, whether that's rural or urban, and whether that's social, affordable or private houses.

What's going to come out of that report, can you say, at this stage?