Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There is a seething anger in all of our communities because of the failure of the Government not just over two and a half years, not just over seven years, but over 12 years, to tackle this housing crisis. I know for some people listening in that when the anger finds its way onto the floor of the Dáil in angry exchanges, it might make for hard listening but that is nowhere near as hard as it is to sit with families week in and week out as we do in our constituency clinics who are facing the consequences of the failure of the Minister's housing plan. Therefore, I make no apologies for expressing that anger here.

It is also deeply frustrating that the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, comes in, as he does repeatedly, and says things that I believe to be untrue both about his own record and about Opposition policy, but he then does not stay for us to be able to rebut his points. If we sometimes overstep the line in our responses to the Minister while he is here, it is because he is a Minister who is singularly unwilling to debate with any of us pretty much anywhere, not just Sinn Féin but other Opposition spokespeople, on television, on the radio, or here.

Let us respond to some of his points. Both he and the Minister of State, Deputy O'Donnell, said that the budget next year for housing when voted capital, LDA, and approved housing body borrowing is added is larger. That is because the LDA has hardly spent a penny in three years. Last year, the agency only spent €51 million of capital funding and so far this year only €200 million. It is meant to be spending €750 million a year. Simply rolling over the LDA's unspent money each year and claiming it is an increase is not true. The Government is meant to be spending €4 billion in capital spending annually between voted expenditure, LDA, and AHBs. What did the Government do last year? It spent €3 billion of the €4 billion. It underspent by €1 billion. At the end of September this year, only €2 billion of the €4 billion allocated had been spent. I accept the Minister will roll it over to next year, but if it is not spent this year, like last year, the Government is not delivering on its targets and people suffer.

Let us look at those targets. The Minister repeatedly said earlier that the Government is meeting its targets; it is not. The global target of public and private sector housing is being met but when you look inside that, every single year, the one thing the Government controls – the delivery of new-build social homes and affordable homes to rent or to buy – it is not meeting its targets; in fact, so much so that to date, 8,500 new-build social homes that should have been delivered were not. That is more than the actual number of households currently in emergency accommodation. The Government's delivery of genuinely affordable homes for people to buy and rent is absolutely pitiful. Last year, it only hit its target by 50% and the year before it was even worse. Halfway through this year, of the 4,400 affordable homes to be delivered, there were only 123. Let us wait to see where we are at the end of the year but the Government is not delivering on the target.

On planning, both the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, and Deputy Michael Healy-Rae mentioned an alleged planning objection by my colleague, Deputy Ó Snodaigh. Anybody who actually bothers to read his letter will see that the opening sentence of it states that he does not object to the social and affordable homes that will be turnkey purchased by Dublin City Council, but he made two asks. They were eminently reasonable, and I stand over them. First, some three-bed units are needed. They cannot all be just one-bed and two-bed units because that area needs three-beds. That is very reasonable. Second, because it is an apartment block, where it egregiously overshadows existing two-storey houses, he asked that a change be made to the design so that it is tiered. That is not an objection. That is good housing policy and good planning. The Minister, Deputy O'Brien, knows that, yet chooses to misrepresent my colleagues.

I will respond specifically to the Minister of State's queries. The help-to-buy scheme is a really bad one, which pushes up house prices. A third of the money has gone to people who did not need it. That is not my view; it is the view of the Mazars report and the Parliamentary Budget Office that €300 million could have been spent tackling real affordability. In fact, the Mazars report, which the Minister of State obviously did not read closely enough, said the scheme should be wound down at the end of 2024. Instead, it has been extended to 2025.

Not only does the first home scheme push up house prices, it saddles working people with debt. The Government was meant to deliver 2,000 units with it last year. How many did it deliver? A handful.

Will the Government deliver 2,000 units of homes purchased this year? Not on the basis of the current trajectory. I will say this again regarding the Croí Cónaithe refurbishment grant. Every time the Minister, Deputy O'Brien comes into the House and says we oppose the scheme, he is telling a lie. I have said that to him over and over again. Read the budget document we published today. We would roll that money into a much more ambitious programme of local authority-led acquisition, refurbishment and sale but still with a grant option. It is in black and white in the document.

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