Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

-----and it, too, is the fault of Government. If the Taoiseach loses the confidence of the House today, that is the fault of the Government. The fault lies at its door.

We have given the Government an opportunity to right its wrong. The Labour Party and other Opposition parties have offered constructive proposals to continue the extension of the ban. For example, we have proposed in draft legislation the use of an evidence basis rather than a time basis for extending the ban. The Government has not even responded. It has not taken up our proposal because it just does not have the answers. Its conservative coalition is not working. It is all spin and no substance and it is failing the people. In the countermotion put forward by the Government last night to another constructive Opposition proposal, the Minister put forward much spin and very little substance. That amendment from the Government was all framed in the future tense - what it will do to address the housing crisis, not what it has done. It did not refer to the measures it should have been taking in the past five months while the eviction ban was in place.

This catastrophic failure in housing delivery lies at the fault of Government. It is a failure of ideology, not of the economy. The State is running a €5.3 billion budget surplus, the highest in Europe. The Taoiseach has scoffed at the scale of the Labour Party's ambition to deliver 1 million homes in ten years. That includes 50,000 new builds a year. That is an achievable ambition and it is the scale we need.

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