Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Minister has finally launched his much talked about and often delayed Housing for All plan. Frankly, I find it underwhelming. One would like to think that those delays related to ensuring the plan was sturdy, deliverable and truly transformative. Unfortunately, it is not. What we have been presented with is more of the same, with lofty ten-year plans that do not solve the many immediate problems we face. Rental prices continue to rise and the plan does little to stymie that. The media suggested the delays were due to arguments between the Government parties. It is clear which of them won that argument. This is a Fine Gael plan - its fingerprints are all over it - written on Fianna Fáil headed paper.

I am proud to represent the constituency of Limerick City, which includes parts of north Tipperary. The area is in the middle of a housing crisis. The almost 6,000 people on housing waiting lists in Limerick do not benefit from this plan. The 2,500 people in need of HAP to help them to afford their rent gain nothing from the plan and neither do the thousands more who are paying extortionate rents without such assistance. The plan will not stop rents from increasing and it will not stop evictions.

Measures I would like to have seen in the plan are a ban on rent increases for three years and a rebate to renters in the form of a refundable tax credit, which would seriously help them. The Housing for All plan outlines a rent value freeze to 2024 but linking increases in RPZs to inflation is a bad move that will only increase rent prices in these areas.

Going by the recent comments of the Minister, he would have us believe that house prices are not out of control. We know from experience that what he says can vary widely from reality. The residential property price index figures show a yearly average increase in property prices of 8.6%. A June 2021 daft.iesales report indicated that Limerick city has seen the biggest jump of any city in the State, with average prices rising by 15.5%. That begs the question of what percentage increase the Minister would consider to be out of control. He is clearly out of control and, going by this offering, he is out of ideas as well.

The larger Government parties created the housing crisis and then exacerbated it, but now people are expected to accept that those same parties can fix it. This document fails to offer solutions to the big issues. It falls at nearly every juncture. Under this plan, social housing delivery will remain low and those looking to buy or those renting are offered nothing new. It is the status quoin shinier clothes. The social housing targets in the plan are lower than those promised by the previous Fine Gael Government. With this Government at the helm, I am not confident it will meet its own modest targets for social and affordable homes. In the past four years, only 4,326 social homes were built. I mentioned the housing waiting lists in Limerick. Is it any wonder those lists are so long, given that only 293 builds of this type were delivered in Limerick since 2019? We need 20,000 social and affordable houses to be built every year. We are past the point of crisis when it comes to housing and it is a crisis the Government parties created.

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