Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Seriously, the Taoiseach's arguments are utterly threadbare. He mentioned HAP. I just told him rents in Dublin are over €2,000. The highest HAP payment anyone can get is €1,950. Someone looking for a HAP tenancy in a housing crisis might as well just walk up to the nearest homeless hostel. That is the reality of what is going on. The biggest fantasy the Taoiseach is peddling is that the Government is delivering additional social housing in any substantial numbers. In the first three quarters of last year, actual construction of new social housing by local authorities and approved housing bodies was 1,084 in the entire country. The Government is getting the rest from the same build-to-rent private developers who are creaming it and charging extortionate rents. They are not only charging extortionate rents to tenants; they are also crucifying the public coffers with the long-term leasing arrangements. The Government is not building the social housing.

The Taoiseach should just walk around Dublin, around my area, and look at all the cranes and apartment blocks. I guarantee him that virtually none of them is social housing. All the construction workers that should be building affordable and public housing on public land are actually building housing to make profits for property investors. That is why we have the housing crisis and the Taoiseach will do nothing about it.

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