Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is good to see the Minister of State, Deputy O’Donnell. I am going to continue the theme of housing and I am sure the Minister of State will not be surprised by that. I have to be frank with him. The situation in Limerick city is dire, and I think the Minister of State knows that. The fact that no affordable homes were delivered in Limerick by the Government last year is an abysmal failure. Just 17 were approved. The targets were incredibly poor in the first place at 264 affordable homes for first-time buyers over a five-year period, which works out at some 53 a year. That is incredibly lacking in ambition but the Government is not even getting near that target.

The Minister of State will know because he does work on the ground, as I do, just how bad the situation is in Limerick. He knows the average rent right now is €1,645 per month. He knows that while the thresholds have been increased, they have been increased nowhere near enough at €35,000 for a single person and €36,500 for a couple. This means we have thousands of people in Limerick trapped in renting and paying €1,600 a month. Just two weeks ago in Castleconnell, a three-bedroom house was going for €2,000. There are thousands of renters trapped paying outrageous rents, not able to afford to make any savings and having no prospect of owning a home of their own. The homeless figures continue to get worse. The Minister of State will know that since the appalling decision to lift the ban on evictions, we are facing an ever-growing crisis of evictions, particularly in Limerick city but also in parts of the county.

I will cite Castleconnell to the Minister of State because he knows the area well. If we look at the local area plan for Castleconnell, it tells us that 130 social houses should be built between now and 2026. Does the Minister of State know how many are actually being built at the minute? It is six. I have to be very frank. That is the Minister of State's responsibility, not just because he is the Minister of State with responsibility for housing but because he has been the local representative for a long time now. There are no other words to describe that than “abject failure”. As a result, the people I am talking to across Castleconnell and across large parts of our city are basically in despair. They have children who want to go to local schools and they have nowhere to live. There is a young woman who is living with her parents not far from where I live. She has two children, a three-year-old and a five-year-old, and she is stuck in her bedroom at home, with her parents, in her late 20s. There is no prospect of a home for her because those homes have not been built.

What particularly concerns me when talking about local authorities is that I have noticed a growing trend of trying to blame the local authority for the lack of action. I completely reject that. I have to say that the people I deal with in Limerick County Council are doing their best, day in, day out, to try to help people. However, they are dealing with an impossible situation because of a lack of Government supports, in the first instance, and a lack of housing.

The figures speak for themselves, and I have just given them to the Minister of State. The Government has failed to build social housing, it has failed to give the moneys required to build social housing and, as a result, people are suffering horrendously where the Minister of State and I live. The problem is that there is no prospect of it changing. I have just cited those figures to the Minister of State. How on earth could anyone justify a target of achieving zero affordable homes in Limerick last year? It is abysmal. We need a sea change in policy. My colleague, Deputy Eoin Ó Broin, has pointed out time and again that the targets are exactly half of what they need to be in terms of social housing, but the Government is getting nowhere near those targets. I would like to hear the Minister of State's response on that.

In the short time I have remaining, I want to speak about the directly elected mayor. As the Minister of State knows, the people of Limerick voted for a directly elected mayor over four years ago. In the Minister of State's speech, he mentioned that the legislation is due to be published shortly, which is exactly what the Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, said when he was in Deputy O’Donnell's shoes last year. People are genuinely scratching their heads in terms of where on earth this legislation is. I heard the Minister of State on Limerick radio just a few weeks back, saying it will be out before the summer. We are finishing in two weeks. Are we going to see it introduced in either House before the summer? We are going to need to examine the Bill in detail. I am very worried because the Minister of State does not seem able to give us any detail in terms of what executive powers a directly elected mayor is going to have, which is a key point. We need this directly elected mayor to be able to tackle the crisis we have in housing, for example, and in transport. I am not convinced, frankly, because the Government is so conservative, that it is going to give the powers that this person needs as mayor. The Minister of State should tell us when exactly it is going to be published, when we can see it and when it is that we can start that debate.