Darren O'Rourke (Meath East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The housing crisis has hit workers and families in my county of Meath extremely hard.

According to the latest Daft.ie rental report, the average rent in Meath is now €1,415, up 4.9% on the figure for this time last year. Rents are 118% higher than they were at their lowest point a few years ago. The monthly rent people are paying is double what a mortgage repayment would be. I am a renter myself. Many younger people are still living with their parents or sharing a house with others to try to keep rent affordable. Families cannot settle in one area because they have to move on when their leases expire. People have no security of tenure. There are thousands on the housing list in Meath and 157 people in the county remain homeless, according to the latest figures. This did not happen by chance. This housing crisis is a direct result of the terrible housing policies pursued by Fine Gael over the past decade and voted through by Fianna Fáil over the years of its disastrous confidence and supply agreement. People are totally locked out of the housing market and have zero confidence that Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will fix the problem because they know those parties' policies caused it.

In my county, Meath, the proposal is to dezone hundreds of acres of land. The county has delivered housing. It certainly has not delivered affordable housing but it has delivered housing in recent years. There are proposals to dezone hundreds of acres of land. The Minister of State, Deputy Peter Burke, mentioned that it takes three years to deliver houses from start to finish. On 1 July 2016, the Rebuilding Ireland programme proposed a council housing development on public land at the Coláiste De Lacy site in Ashbourne. Those houses will be delivered in quarter 1 of 2023, seven years later. With the Department of Education working with the local authority, that is how long it takes this Government to deliver on housing. That says everything we need to know about its commitment to delivering public housing on public land. It is not serious about it and will never do it.

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