Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Government has dodged repeatedly the production of an adequate supply of affordable housing for young people, many of them now in their late 20s and 30s for whom ever purchasing their own home on a mortgage is becoming an impossible dream. The Government seems to have accepted this. Instead, people are languishing in a rental trap which means they are paying rents which are rising constantly. In many cases in my own area, they have now gone over €1,500 per month - even up to €2,000 per month - for ordinary three-bedroom houses. Something is fundamentally broken in the housing market when rents are significantly higher than the cost of financing a mortgage on a monthly basis. For that alone, the Government should recognise that it is a broken market and an emergency.

Speculation and speculators in land are back in business with values going up by a factor of ten to 15 times. New houses typically are around the €400,000 mark on a 35-year mortgage. That is not sustainable. We have unserviced land and land for development all around Dublin. The Government commits too little too late for vital infrastructure to allow thousands of acres to be opened up and the land to be developed. Dereliction all over Dublin city centre tells its own story of the Government's lack of will and purpose.

Unless the Minister gets his act together sooner rather than later, he will be classified as helpless, hopeless and hapless, and as having, as so many members of this Government have, something of an air of entitlement. I wonder at times if he understands the incredible stress and strain on people who are now routinely caught in this grinder of a lack of housing, unfair rents and a lack of access to an affordable home or a social house.

The Minister scoffed some months ago when I said the Government is not training apprentices at anything like the rate the construction industry requires. Could he even learn some simple small lessons? Notwithstanding that the national average unemployment rate is around 5.5%, there are areas where it is about 18%. Young people would give their eye teeth for a decent apprenticeship but the Minister is sitting on his hands and doing little or nothing.

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