Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Deputy for raising the issue of housing, because I have repeatedly said that, in my view, housing is the single most urgent and important social issue facing our country at this point in time. Access to housing is fundamental to our security, stability, health and progress as a society. If we do not recognise the scale of the challenge and respond in kind, then this has the potential to be profoundly destabilising for society and to deprive many younger generations of the capacity to access housing in terms of being able to buy or rent at affordable rates.

The Housing for All strategy developed by this Government in the last year and a half is unprecedented in scale and investment, with more than €4 billion in State investment. It is the largest ever amount of social housing to be built year-by-year, with well up to 10,000 in 2022, between local authorities and approved social housing bodies. I refer as well to providing and supporting the provision of affordable housing, as well as cost rental and private development. As I said to the Deputy the week before last, regarding private rental, for example, of the 33,000 units that we are aiming to provide year-by-year, about 6,000 of those will be private rental. The Deputy acknowledged that there would be a need for private housing, in addition to social housing, State-supported affordable housing and cost-rental housing.

The Deputy is rewriting the narrative again today, because, unfortunately for her, the housing issue has all been about politics. The O'Devaney Gardens project would have been built a long time ago if it was not for people playing politics with it. It is either the Sinn Féin way or the highway. We either build houses its way or we will never build houses. It will always be against any sort of mixed tenure approach, or an approach that involves a mixture of social, affordable and private housing. Dublin City Council would have been very involved with O'Devaney Gardens. The project goes back to 2015, in more recent times-----

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