Seán Crowe (Dublin South West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I was watching "Reeling in the Years" during the week. For some of us of a certain age it helps to jog our memory. The year in question was 1966, which was a momentous year. It was the 50th anniversary of the 1916 Rising. Nelson's Pillar was blown up. There was also a segment in the programme where a young Cathal O'Shannon spoke about the difficulties young couples were finding in buying affordable housing.

They were talking in terms of thousands of pounds that people had to come up with at that time. The difference between then and now is that even when one goes back to the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, a family on a single income could afford to buy a home. Unfortunately, I can trace it back to a certain period, I was a Member of the Dáil during that time, when we moved away from the idea of the collective and towards that of the individual. That is when the changes started to happen and people were squeezed out of the market. It was about introducing greed and that people would not be able to afford their own homes.

We are in the grip of a housing crisis and we cannot afford to waste any opportunity to get families out of homelessness and into secure accommodation. It would be wrong to allow any chance for thousands of social and affordable homes to come on to the market in order that big developers can line their pockets just a little more. Only by providing social and affordable housing can we ever stand a chance of reducing homelessness in country. An ESRI report published only in the pastweek showed that lone parents, migrants, people with disabilities, Travellers, single and younger people all struggle to source funding for housing and are depending on an expensive rental market to meet their housing needs.

The Government’s only idea was to bring in a shared equity scheme, which will only push the cost of houses higher still. This Government refuses to bring in a vacant property tax, to build social housing or to bring in rent freezes. Housing for All is a reheated version of past Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael policies that has managed to be even less ambitious than those other plans the Government failed to deliver on.

Until the Government commits to ramping up capital investment in social and genuinely affordable homes, the most vulnerable in our society will continue to struggle. I do not want people who may be watching “Reeling in the Years” in years to come to say we had the same parties, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, making the same mistakes with people still being excluded from the party, which is why we need to act now.

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