Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy has laid out some facts. Many of them are correct but they are also one-sided. It is true that house prices have increased by about 90% since the trough in 2013, but what the Deputy did not mention - and this is relevant - is that they are still lower than the peak 12 or 13 years ago. We certainly do not want to see them go back to that level. House prices have gone up by about 4% in the past year but we will need to see where that goes. The figure may well be distorted by the fact that we had no building, real estate transactions or house viewings for months, and that may change. It may stabilise or go in a different direction in the next few months. A lot of statistics at the moment are thrown by the pandemic, and we need to bear that in mind.

The Deputy is right that home ownership has fallen off significantly in recent years, but it is still the case that between 65% and 70% of people in Ireland own their own homes. That is a higher percentage than in the US, the UK, Germany, France, Australia and lots of other places. That has nothing to do with Sinn Féin; it has to do with policies pursued by parties that have been in government in the past few decades. The problem we have - and it is a problem - is that home ownership has been out of reach for far too many people in their 20s and 30s for far too long. That is what we have to change over the next three years in government to make that reality of home ownership possible for people now in their 20s and 30s so they can own their homes, just as their parents did.

Investment funds were invited into Ireland back in 2012. We should be honest about the fact that Ireland was a very different place in 2012. Home values were plummeting, hundreds of thousands of people were in negative equity, hundreds of thousands of people were in mortgage arrears, there were ghost estates all over the country, nothing was being sold and nothing was being built. Money from investors in Ireland and overseas helped to turn that around. However, things have changed now. I get that. The Government gets that. Home ownership has been out of reach for far too many people for far too long, and that requires a change of policy, one that prioritises first-time buyers and families who need to upgrade to bigger homes. For this reason, next Tuesday the Cabinet will consider proposals to do exactly that. They will be brought forward by the Ministers, Deputies Donohoe and Darragh O'Brien, and we will act quickly in that regard. Funds do, however, have a role to play. We have to build about 350,000 new homes over the next ten years at a cost of about €120 billion. There is no way the State can finance all of that on its own. We need the private sector and public sector working together and we need public housing and private housing.

Before I finish I want to say this, and I really do feel this way. Sinn Féin, the Deputy's party, speaks with a forked tongue when it comes to home ownership. This week and last week, Sinn Féin has tried to present itself as a champion of first-time buyers and families who want to upgrade, of homeowners, but the policy of Sinn Féin is the absolute reverse. Its constant mantra is "public housing on public land". That is no good to people who want to own a home. It is no good to first-time buyers or people who need to upgrade. In Sinn Féin's actions it demonstrates this all the time. Sinn Féin councillors all across Dublin and around the country have voted down mixed developments. The stated reason for their voting them down is that some private housing would be built on those sites. They did not want a single home that somebody could actually buy outright. Yes, maybe some affordable schemes and, yes, social housing, but they have consistently voted against housing on huge sites across Dublin and around the country, exactly because homes might be built on them that people could buy.

I have read and studied Sinn Féin's affordable housing policy. It is very different from the one put forward by the Government. It is a leasehold arrangement. You never get to own the house. It is never freehold. That is a totally different vision. It is a Sinn Féin vision. It is an ideology that is anti-enterprise, anti-private property and, therefore, anti-home ownership.

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