Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Clearly, the Deputy is engaging in a propagandistic, sloganeering approach to housing. In the recent budget, the Government allocated unprecedented resources to a broad suite of measures to deal with the housing crisis. The largest social housing programme was budgeted for in 2021, in terms of public and social housing, including direct builds by approved housing bodies. Yet the Deputy has consistently ignored the largest budget in history that has been provided for housebuilding generally.

We had planned to build 9,500 social homes in 2021. That would be the biggest amount in the history of the State but clearly Covid-19 and the current lockdown will impact on that. We will try to recover ground as much as we can. Fianna Fáil has been in Government for eight months and in that period, from the July stimulus on, we have made rapid progress in relation to housing, in terms of the Land Development Agency Bill, for example. We did real detailed work on that Bill, which will be an extra lever when it is passed, to give effect to the building of social and affordable housing. The Minister published the Affordable Housing Bill on 20 January. It delivers on the programme for Government commitment to putting affordability at the heart of the housing system.

Our only interest is in giving young people a chance to buy houses. If the Deputy takes last year as an example, the number of houses built was not sufficient to deal with the housing crisis. This kind of branding and references to developers and all that is political propaganda because at the moment we do not have the degree of activity that we should have, either in the private sector or in the public sector, which will pick up.

The voids programme alone was an immediate and effective piece of work we undertook from July with nearly 3,500 houses returned for people to access. That was evidence of a can-do approach to this. We will use all measures to improve and enhance affordability but also to get houses built. Ultimately, we need to get more houses built and that will take efforts in the private sector and in the public sector, through approved housing values, all the while focusing on the crisis of homelessness.

Sinn Féin has consistently opposed home ownership. It voted against our affordability motions and the help-to-buy scheme. It is now against the equity scheme before it has even been set up. It is nowhere near as dangerous as the Deputy is trying to indicate. Sinn Féin has voted against housing development motions 16 out of 21 times on Dublin City Council. It is time it got off the fence on those issues and started allowing housing schemes to begin. Do not allow ideology and politics to get in the way of houses getting built. Too much of that is going on in Dublin City Council and elsewhere in terms of significant projects that could allow for affordable housing right now, before any scheme, if they were allowed to develop. However, Sinn Féin has constantly opposed such schemes. It really undermines the credibility of the proposition made by the Deputy this morning.

My only interest and the interest of the Government is to get as many houses built as we possibly can. We know, according to the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, that we should be building approximately 33,000 houses per annum to deal with demand and the crisis we have experienced for the last number of years regarding housing and in addition, to create the capacity for people to be able to afford to buy houses.

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