Taoiseach Micheál Martin and Tánaiste Simon Harris have reiterated that delivering on housing is the "number one priority" for the Government.
At the end of a Cabinet Committee on Housing today, they said in a joint statement that while the Government's Housing For All plan is updated over the coming months, ministers have been asked to prioritise the delivery of utilities like water and electricity for housing development.
Referencing the updated Planning and Development Bill passed last year, ministers have also been urged to make progress on exempted developments.
Other initiatives include drafting new Compulsory Purchase Order legislation, delivering social and starter housing, commencing a review of Rent Pressure Zones and updating the Short Term Letting and Tourism Bill.
The committee also agreed to advance the establishment of the Strategic Housing Activation Office with the aim of unblocking infrastructure delays. Staff from the main utility providers will be seconded full-time to the unit.
Another measure signed off was proceeding with the Revised National Planning Framework, including utilising sections of the 2000 Planning Act, to allow the minister to give directions on accelerating spatial planning.
Finally, the statement said there was also discussion on the Rural Wastewater Schemes and how to ensure that small and medium housing developments can take place across the Regions.
Notably, there was no reference to tax breaks for developers.
Earlier, Minister for Finance Pascal Donohoe expressed strong opposition to the Coalition introducing broad tax reliefs for developers as a means of stimulating housing output.
Speaking in Brussels, he said the tax reliefs of the Celtic Tiger era "proved to be very, very costly, and we have already acknowledged that it's very difficult to identify how they can be targeted."
Mr Donohoe said he will "strongly be making the case... that we should not bring in and reintroduce the reliefs that proved so costly."
However, he added that the Coalition is "united in our commitment to build more homes in Ireland and ensure that the great needs within our society and economy are met."
He indicated that the country needs to "do more with our infrastructure" and "the availability planning permission, and availability of lands on which homes can be built."
The minister suggested that existing policy interventions, such as the Help to Buy and Shared Home Equity schemes, were "positive interventions" which should continue.
He added: "What I'm not going to do is re-introduce, or propose, the very tax reliefs that did such harm to our economy and then the building of homes for many years in Ireland."
Call for rent caps to be retained
The Social Democrats has described the Government's housing plan as a proven failure.
The party will call in the Dáil this week for a 100% stamp duty rate on the bulk purchase of homes to effectively ban the practice.
Social Democrats TD Rory Hearne said Ireland should adopt a model similar to France to address the housing crisis.
Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Claire Byrne, Mr Hearne urged the Government to introduce a range of measures.
"The first one is to retain the rent caps, the rent pressure zones. We want to put forward a number of solutions and ideas," he said.
"These are different ideas than the way the Government appear to be going down... they even talked about giving Celtic Tiger tax incentives to investor funds and we all saw the damage that did."
Additional reporting by Mícheál Lehane
