Paul Donnelly (Dublin West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I have an email folder full of stories of ordinary people who are struggling to rent and buy at the moment. Some have been on social housing lists for more than ten years. Unfortunately, this is not a housing for all strategy, but more of the same failed Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael housing policies that created the crisis in the first place. A constituent wrote the following to me this week:

I am writing to you again to vent my desperation with regards to my housing situation and ask for some help. I am 35 years old and born and raised in Dublin 15. I work in social care support services. I love my job and I have worked hard all my life. I am living in my parents' attic and have been trying for years to save for a mortgage. I am a single applicant, but the increase in house prices has meant that I am still stuck here and see no hope for the future and no hope that I, an adult woman, will ever be able to move out of my family home.

How disgraceful is that?

I would say that there is hope. Circumstances will change when this Government has been replaced and Sinn Féin begins to implement a people-led strategy. Sinn Féin has a plan to ensure the delivery of at least 20,000 social, affordable and rental homes, and also to deliver on social housing through new build acquisition and the refurbishment of vacant and derelict stock.

There is €500 million for developers in the Housing for All strategy. That sums up this Government's approach. There is nothing in the plan to tackle rising rents, but there is plenty for developers, including the controversial shared equity loan scheme, which will inflate house prices even further. The vast majority of housing that is promised by this Government would lead to the State still relying on private developers to deliver homes. Have we not learned, and has the Government not learned, time and again that this has failed? We need a huge investment of public money to allow local authorities to build homes in places like Churchfields in Mulhuddart, Dublin 15, a project that has been in the planning stages for the past four years. I was a councillor when the process started, yet not a single affordable or cost rental home has been built there. We need to put forward a genuine strategy in relation to housing.

Deputy Lahart mentioned the fact that Fianna Fáil has stopped SHDs and co-living developments. They would not there in the first place if Fianna Fáil had put their foot down during the confidence and supply agreement. It is a bit rich for members of that party to come in here and continuously claim that it is something for which they can now congratulate themselves and pat themselves on the back.

Planning development was mentioned by the Taoiseach earlier. A planning application was submitted for co-living development in Blanchardstown last year. It was opposed by myself, Deputy Chambers, Senator Currie and the Minister for Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth, plus a plethora of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Green Party councillors. The opposition is across the board. The Government should not be patting itself on the back for something it cannot claim for itself.

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