Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire (Cork South Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste referred to 15% unemployment. As I said, that is still the rate for young people. She spoke of the reality I outlined. That is the reality for young workers. Any young workers to whom I speak are on a treadmill that is getting faster and faster as the cost of everything that matters to them in their lives, whether insurance, housing or anything else, increasingly outstrips any increases in their pay. They simply cannot keep up and they feel locked out. I meet such people in my clinics every week.

I raised with the Tánaiste the specific issue of housing. The Government and Fianna Fáil said this budget would be measured on the basis of what it did in housing. If that is so, it has surely failed in that there will be no new social housing beyond what has been already announced and, incredibly, literally nothing on affordable housing. This is a hammer blow to the ambitions of thousands. This is a huge category of people, ranging from those in the tech professions in Dublin to tradespeople in Limerick. It is a wide variety of people from all sorts of backgrounds who are unable to qualify for social housing and cannot get mortgages, and this Government is doing literally nothing for them. They come to my clinics and ask me what options they have. They have none, and this Government is doing nothing about it. It made an announcement about the possibility of an affordable housing scheme this year. There was nothing in this budget on that. For seven years Fine Gael has been in Government. The Government talks about working families. That is absolute cant to those who are simply paying a fortune on rent and have no prospect-----

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