Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We have a housing policy that has failed. We have heard many times over the years of the consistent and constant failure to build council houses, affordable cost rental homes and houses that can be bought at affordable rates. We have heard all the stories in recent days: of people who are paying extortionate rates of rent; of those who are lucky enough to avail of HAP and who still have to pay top-ups; and of the huge amount of money we spend on HAP as a State. In 2020 we spent in or around €464.6 million on HAP. This is crazy. We are on the side of IREFs and REITs and we have facilitated them with tax breaks every which way.

It is all well and good to say that public expenditure can only cover X, Y or Z but there are many means of drawing down money, whether that is through Europe or private money, but it needs to deliver for people. We need to put a shape and structure in place that allow people to afford rents and to be able to buy affordable houses and in order that we produce affordable cost rentals. The system we have is utterly dysfunctional and is not working for anybody. There is talk about the Land Development Agency, LDA, being a solution and selling land to developers, as opposed to using our own land. Even if that is the case, we will be getting developers to build on it to produce what we need to produce. If we talk about an affordable housing scheme with houses at €450,000, where are we going? Everybody is being priced out of the market. We have a huge quotient of people who will miss their slot to be able to buy houses.

We hear from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that they are the parties of delivering for homeownership. They need to do it. I am not overly concerned about anything from an ideological point of view but let us be clear that what Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have done to date has not worked and what they are planning to do will not work. Rather than make snide comments, it would be far better for them to read the real solutions that Deputies Ó Broin and Doherty have put together. We should stop the political backbiting and we could deliver for our people because we are failing them.

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