Darragh O'Brien (Dublin Fingal, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

This Government will help them out and I hope Sinn Féin will see fit to support the affordable housing Bill when it stops delaying its passage in committee.

Sinn Féin's political tactics are slash and burn, not build and renew. First-time buyers are collateral damage in that political game, which is what part of today's motion is. Its record on helping first-time buyers is all too clear. The party publicly opposed the help-to-buy scheme, which ensured 22,000 homeowners got keys to their doors. Deputy Doherty and his colleagues oppose that scheme and would scrap it. They opposed the Land Development Agency Bill, which brings about a land management agency to put the State's land to productive use to deliver affordable and social homes for working people. Sinn Féin opposes it.

It also opposed the shared equity scheme and housing development motions on 16 of 21 occasions at Dublin City Council. It has opposed 975 homes being built in Clondalkin, including 30% social housing. It opposed 500 homes in Tallaght, of which 80% would have been social or affordable purchase. It opposed 278 homes in Swords and continues to oppose 1,200 homes in Donabate, 238 of which are affordable and another 238 of which are social homes. That is what Sinn Féin is doing on the ground. They are more real examples of the Sinn Féin mantra of "I am all for housing but".

We now know what Sinn Féin is against but we never know of what it is in favour. The country needs approximately 350,000 new homes by 2030, with funding of over €120 billion. How much of this does Sinn Féin believe should come from the private sector? There is a giant hole in the Sinn Féin doughnut-shaped housing policy, and it is the private sector. Small and medium-sized builders will play a massive role in driving supply and this is key to addressing the crisis. In the Sinn Féin vision, they have no role but we need people to build homes. One would think, listening to Sinn Féin, such builders are not required and the party could not even bring itself to call for the construction sector to be reopened after the pandemic. This Government and I will use every tool in our armoury to get bricks and mortar put on the ground for homes that working people can afford. To have a real impact on this, we must have pragmatic measures with both the public and private sector. We cannot fight with one hand tied behind our back.

We should not allow one party's perfect be the enemy of the common good. Half-baked Opposition claims that the public sector could next year deliver 20,000 units are really the stuff of Legoland building. Sinn Féin claims it could deliver 20,000 public homes this year but Deputy Ó Broin will not say where they would be, how they would be built, who would build them or how long it would take. This completely ignores the reality of the pandemic. We can see the party's trenchant criticism of specific housing projects, which have real plans to deliver homes for working people, without even thinking about the party's misleading ownership schemes. Political grandstanding will not build new homes but practical policies will. That is what the Government is committing to do through our affordable housing Bill, our Land Development Agency Bill and the single biggest budget in the history of the State related to housing.

Inevitably, the pandemic and the current shutdown of the sector will have a severe impact on output this year. We will need to be imaginative in the coming months to drive on supply by tackling vacancies and improving delivery. Silver bullet solutions like this motion will not cut it but we can also put in place legislative foundations for a new approach to this crisis, where home ownership can be put right back on the table for a generation. It is the very subject I have spoken about since the day I took over as Minister. That has been smothered up to now by rising rents and job uncertainty. We will use targeted planning and taxation measures to protect buyers from predatory actions such as those we saw in Maynooth, and will ensure that private institutional investment is focused where it needed, that is, to boost supply rather than take from it.

I fully recognise that the Government must tackle this matter and we are committed to doing so in a real and effective way by putting home ownership in a central position and passing our affordable housing and Land Development Agency Bills and by launching and rolling out the very first cost rental affordable scheme in the history of the State. These are real measures that will take effect in this country.

I have met the Minister for Finance, Deputy Donohoe, and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, Deputy Michael McGrath, and it is a priority for our Government to address the issue of bulk-selling of properties from under the noses of first-time buyers. We will take measures promptly to ensure a fix can be put in place. I hope that when measures are brought forward, the Deputies opposite who introduced this evening's motion will see their way to supporting them.

I also hope that when the Sinn Féin Party, in particular, and others look at the measures being brought forward by the Government with the affordable housing Bill and the Land Development Agency Bill, it will be honest with the people they purport to represent. Within those Bills are real measures, money and resources to support first-time buyers and ensure people can realise the dream of home ownership. This is a whole generation that has, for too long, been locked out of that market. It is a priority for the Government that people can own their own home at an affordable rate and have somewhere secure to call their own, whether it is to rent or buy. It is what we are focused on doing. We will detail further measures on how to protect first-time buyers in future shortly.

See this speech in context