Housing Provision
Dail Éireann — 2026-10-01
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Brian Stanley (IND), Laois

The median price of a house in Laois has gone up. According to the property price register, it has gone up 16.8% in one year. The Minister gave out a lot of figures, but the reality is that the target given by his Department, which I have here, is 38 affordable-to-buy and cost-rental homes to be done in Laois over a five-year period. It is minuscule and would not even make a dent in the numbers that we need. The demand is massive. Laois County Council directly delivered over 90 homes. The Minister was down at the launch of some of them. There are 62 more in the pipeline. The Minister was at the launch of Dargan Woods, which are good houses.
I want to raise a point about that. The scheme needs to be expanded to meet the demands of households whose incomes are over the threshold for social housing but do not qualify for or cannot get a mortgage. These workers and households are the real squeezed middle, typically trapped in private rented accommodation and paying sky-high rents. I gave the Minister the median price. There was an increase of 16.8%. In Laois, one-, two- and three-bedroom homes now cost €348,000. The scheme needs to be expanded.
This is not about being parochial. The Minister attended the launch of Dargan Woods. Due to the way the scheme was advertised, people could apply from anywhere. People moved from Dublin to cost-rental accommodation in Dargan Woods. They are now commuting to Dublin. Some local workers who work in County Laois applied but did not get in first and missed out. They are unable to get a house in the locality. We need to reduce commuting times and get people to live where they are working. Not to be parochial, but we need to open the schemes to people in the county in the first instance. I ask that the Minister's Department consider that.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-10-01/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-10-05T01:01:00+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-10-01