Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Today the ESRI published a report detailing the need for the State to take a new approach to housing. The approach outlined is to borrow money and build houses. Sinn Féin has been calling for this strategy for years. While the ESRI's calculations are on the conservative side, it still found that the most effective and viable option to solving the crisis is to borrow and to build.

In my maiden speech at Cork City Council in 2009 I warned the Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil councillors that the State was in a housing crisis. They laughed and said there was no such thing as a housing crisis. Yet, here we are 12 years on and the ESRI estimates a need to build 35,000 new homes every year to come on stream if we are to meet our targets. This year, between the Government and the private sector, the best guess that the Government will deliver is 15,000 homes. This leaves a deficit of 20,000 homes, a deficit that has been building for years because of a lack of investment by a Fine Gael Government, and a Fine Gael supported by Fianna Fáil Government.

I will outline what we are looking for over the lifetime of this Government. If Sinn Féin was in power we would deliver 100,000 homes in five years, 60,000 of which would be social homes, 30,000 affordable purchase homes, and 10,000 affordable rental homes. We would put an end to the reliance on the private sector and private developers. If Deputy Eoin Ó Broin was the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, he would provide people with homes.

There are more than 5,000 families and people on the Cork City Council housing waiting list. This does not include those on housing assistance payment, HAP, the rental accommodation scheme, RAS, or rent supplement, who are not properly housed. The waiting lists are so long that when people ring me about their applications for social housing I must tell them that their young children will probably be teenagers before they get housed. People are waiting eight, nine and ten years, and even longer, before they get even an offer of a house. A child should not have to spend his or her entire childhood waiting on a permanent, secure home. Children of Cork and across the State are growing up in overcrowded and unsuitable accommodation. This is because Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael allowed this to happen. These parties created the housing crisis.

Yesterday, the Tánaiste is reported to have assured his Fine Gael Party colleagues that the local property tax will be reduced for people with homes worth €1 million. Is the Government so out of touch that they think reducing taxes on the very wealthy is what is needed right now, when children are growing up waiting on a home? Does the Minister of State not accept that the Government must now finally change its housing strategy and recognise that the Sinn Féin strategy to borrow and build is the only way we can solve the housing crisis? The ESRI has come out and virtually said that the Sinn Féin strategy is the only way forward to delivering houses. This is a housing emergency. We have had a Covid -19 emergency and we threw all the money needed at it to resolve it. Now we need to do the same with housing. We need to put the investment in there to deliver the houses that are needed. This is for the people.

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