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

The fact that the Deputy has to go out of his way to misrepresent what I say and to misquote me is emblematic of how dishonest and two-faced he and his party are when it comes to the issue of housing. What I said was a statement of fact, but I did not say under any circumstances that I thought it was desirable that we should see house prices rise further or get back to the level they were at 14 years ago. What the Deputy misquoted me as saying was absolutely incorrect and he should withdraw it from the record. It is not the first time his party has deliberately twisted, misrepresented and deceived regarding comments made by Ministers in respect of housing, because that is the only way it can gain traction, particularly online. It is a real shame that this is the way the Deputy behaves. Quite frankly, it is beneath him to misrepresent things that Members say in the House for political purposes.

I believe in home ownership and, thankfully, 65% of people in Ireland own their own home. That has nothing to do with Sinn Féin. It is due to policies and decisions made by my party, Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party, the Green Party and others in bygone years. However, it is not a reality for hundreds of thousands of people in the State. For them, home ownership is a dream or a distant possibility. That has to change, and I get that. The Government gets that too and that is why we have taken actions to help people to buy their first home. For example, the help-to-buy scheme has helped tens of thousands of people to secure a deposit to buy a home. That was opposed by Sinn Féin. The Rebuilding Ireland home loan helps people to get an affordable mortgage. This is something we must build on and make more available to more people. The rent pressure zones limit rent increases to no more than 4% in areas where rents are high and rising. As the Deputy knows, that is currently under review to see if we can do more in that regard. In contrast, Sinn Féin's local authorities and councillors in Northern Ireland voted to increase rents. That is the type of hypocrisy we see from the Deputy and his party.

Of course, the main part of the solution, and it is not the sole solution, is more supply of housing of all forms. Social housing to help people get off the housing list does not just benefit people getting off the housing list but society as a whole because it frees up rental properties for others, reduces competition for private housing in the general housing market and helps first-time buyers. That is why between 2016 and 2019, when my party held the housing brief, we increased the supply of social housing tenfold, from approximately 600 per year to 6,000 per year. We are aiming to go higher under this Government and to reach more than 10,000 per year, if possible. However, there are constraints, and the Deputy knows that better than most. Cost rental has been initiated by my party. On Enniskerry Road, we will see the first people occupying cost rental properties very soon. That has nothing to do with Sinn Féin. The Government is going to build on that and there will be far more cost-rental housing as well. The shared ownership scheme, which Sinn Féin opposes here but promotes in the North, is helping people to buy affordable housing.

There is also support for private investment in housing. That is necessary because most people want to own their own home. That means private housing, private enterprise and private developers, all of which Sinn Féin opposes and which it would essentially drive out of the housing market, thus resulting in less housing supply. What was emblematic of Sinn Féin's approach was what it did in Donabate in Dublin Fingal, the county in which I live and not too far from my constituency.

Sinn Féin, for ideological reasons, voted against more than 200 social houses because 600 private houses were going to be built on the same site. The party was so ideologically opposed to private housing and homeownership that it was willing to vote against social housing as well. Does the Deputy believe homeownership should be higher? It is now roughly 65%. Does Sinn Féin think that percentage should be higher, or does it secretly believe in less homeownership? Does the party want a higher percentage of housing in public ownership and a lower percentage in private ownership? I would like to know that, because there has never been an answer to the question of whether Sinn Féin believes in increasing the percentage of homeownership and in more people owning their own homes. I would love to hear the Deputy's answer in that regard.

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