Pat Casey (Wicklow, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I did not interrupt the Deputy. Sinn Féin has the brass neck to attack Fianna Fáil, which after the 2016 general election took its duty to the Irish people seriously and facilitated the formation of a Government. What did Sinn Féin do? They ran away from the responsibility and bided their time so that they could attack from the sideline. If there were all-Ireland medals handed out for hurling on the ditches, Sinn Féin would beat Kilkenny, Cork and Tipperary combined. That is the old, cynical, populist politics that has much in common with Donald Trump and the Brexiteers and is doing much to damage the difficult, painstaking but necessary work of building consensus and delivering housing solutions for all our people. I call on Sinn Féin to withdraw or at least amend the motion.

There are substantial differences between Fianna Fáil and the Fine Gael-led Government on housing. We have held its spin-driven and timid approach to housing to account time and time again. We have done so in good faith in the belief that its solutions are not addressing the problem, namely, the lack of affordable housing for all citizens who need it. We have been both relentless in holding its failures to the light of public scrutiny and constructive in our proposals. We believe a housing agency is essential both to resolve the enormous scale of Fine Gael's housing crisis and to effectively manage housing policy and stock to ensure we never have another disaster in housing.

I also dismiss and reject Fine Gael's attempts to play politics with criticism of the housing agency idea from both the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and the Taoiseach. They have both cynically briefed against the idea of a housing agency on the spurious and nonsensical premise that it somehow lets local authorities off the hook. Having served for 12 years on Wicklow County Council, I can assure the Minister that we in Fianna Fáil believe strongly in local authorities' central role in housing provision and will not take any spin or nonsense from him on housing agencies.

The housing agency was a key pillar recommendation from the special Committee on Housing and Homelessness on which members of Fine Gael sat. It was a cross-party recommendation and the Minister should not hide behind the spin machine of his party's Strategic Communications Unit. He should not dismiss the cross-party consensus on a housing agency in his rush to be ahead of the curve in his news cycle-obsessed Administration.

The Goodbody housing tracker report indicates that housing output will have to treble if we are to get on top of the housing shortage. I call on the Minister to start concentrating on that. He should work with us and not against us. His affordable mortgage proposal, while welcome, is again locking too many hard-working people out of sustainable financial products that would allow them to buy their own home. The housing agency would provide necessary continuous and professional guidance on all these housing matters. The agency would co-ordinate the response, from central government objectives to local authority delivery. We in Fianna Fáil are serious about housing. We demand a hearing. We will not tolerate playing politics with people's expectations by either Sinn Féin or Fine Gael. Time is running out. Ireland deserves better. Our people deserve homes.

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