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

I have to disagree with the Deputy's presentation of the issue. Fianna Fáil has been in a coalition Government with the Fine Gael Party and the Green Party for ten months, having been out of government for ten years. We have made housing a major priority of Government, with our colleagues. The Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, has applied great energy to a range of measures designed to deal with the housing issue and homelessness. The photograph the Deputy referred to is a very upsetting one, but progress has been made on homelessness in the past ten months. Family homelessness has declined by approximately 42% and homelessness overall by 19%, but more needs to be done. Progress has been made in regard to homelessness but we are determined to do more and to expand the Housing First programme, which has been effective in reducing homelessness, particularly for single adults. That is something on which the Minister is very focused.

We want to create opportunities for people to own their own homes. We also want to create opportunities for people to get faster access to social housing, with the State taking a key role in building, and facilitating the building of, social houses. A total of €3.3 billion was allocated in the budget, which is an unprecedented sum, to make sure we can start to build the largest social housing programme in the history of the State.

Over the lifetime of the Government it will result in 50,000 new social houses being built. We were hit in the first three months of the year, which the Deputy has not acknowledged. We had to shut down construction significantly because of Covid-19 and the third wave. We allowed some social housing to stay open to complete projects. We are very determined in respect of the social housing agenda to build 12,750 new social houses this year. That was the target prior to the shutting down of construction for the first few months of the year. Some 9,500 of those were new-build homes. We are committed and we will do everything we can to accelerate that. We are going to look at a void programme again this year, like we did last year. As soon as we came into office we went straight at it and got close to 3,500 houses back into use through allocation of funding to local authorities for the voids.

The new equity scheme that Deputy McDonald talks about will help 2,000 people to be in a position to buy their own homes this year, if we can get that through with the legislation. A new affordable purchase scheme with the State directly building affordable homes is another key initiative to help people to buy their own homes. There is a retained and expanded help-to-buy scheme. The Deputy talks about giving people the opportunity to own their own homes and to aspire to that. Yet, she opposed the help-to-buy scheme and continues to oppose the shared equity scheme while making claims about it that are completely exaggerated in terms of its impact. The launch of the Land Development Agency is an important part of policy, as is the new cost-rental scheme that the Minister has introduced, which will create wider options for people this year in respect of the rental area. We want to expand that significantly.

There is a comprehensive programme here. It is unprecedented in scale. No shortage of resources has been allocated across all strands of the housing area. I appeal to the Deputy that on the various local authorities where her party members are represented to stop opposing housing projects. Let us have a consensus across all the parties in the House that we facilitate projects now and get them going. That is important in terms of giving people opportunities. There is no point in standing up in the House and saying we want people to have an opportunity to own homes and get access to social housing if projects are delayed and delayed and opposed and opposed and nothing gets built where projects are shovel-ready. That really is a disservice to people.

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