Mr. Owen Reidy:

I will put my remarks in context. We do not doubt the earnest desire of the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, and his colleagues in trying to address what is an incredible challenge. If we are honest, for over a decade the State has done nothing and we are trying to catch up. However, there needs to be a 180° change in approach. We sit on the housing, labour and employer economic forum. When we meet the Government at plenary level, we constantly hear talk about supply. It is not about supply, however; it is about affordability. There is no point in supplying homes in this city, or across the country in members' constituencies, if the price of those homes is 250% more than 20 years ago and wages have gone up by much less than that. I will use as an example a house in the constituency of the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, where I used to live. A four-bedroom semi-detached house in Donabate cost €200,000 in 2020. Today, it is probably €550,000 or €570,000. That is not a market. That is dysfunctional. The State needs to be a supplier rather than a consumer. It needs to stop using its limited resources as a bandage to put over a wound that is seeping. We need a completely different approach.

The private sector approach has failed utterly. We need a public sector-led approach. We should look at other places in Europe that do this much better, such as the Netherlands or Vienna. I am 51 and have older siblings who left this country in the 1980s because of the employment crisis. I have two children who are probably going to leave. They are in a home where both parents are working and are well paid, but they will probably go because they do not want to live with their parents forever. We are going to be exporting our youngsters. We need a completely different approach. I do not believe we are going to get that. Maybe we will get it in the future but we have to stop doing what we are doing.

Mr. McGeady gave the analogy of how rents and house prices have gone up compared to wages. It seems that we are digging the hole deeper. I am not saying that the Irish Congress of Trade Unions has all the answers. Far from it, but the current approach of focusing on supply and not even thinking of affordability is simply not working.