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

The help-to-buy scheme benefited 29,000 people. Sinn Féin has opposed it resolutely since its inception. On shared equity, Sinn Féin plays a double game. It actually sneakily voted for it in the end despite all the ranting and raving about it by Deputy Ó Broin and so on. He opposes shared equity, allegedly, but ended up voting for it when it came before the House.

I look at the Sinn Féin policies on affordability. I do not see any coherent policy of substance in terms of people owning their own homes. In terms of its affordable housing scheme, for example, it is clear people will not end up owning their homes. It is threadbare. Sinn Féin lacks substance in its housing policy. I saw this morning another manufactured attack on the shared equity scheme, putting out the old slogan that somehow the Government is looking after the banks versus those who would end up owning homes as a result of a shared equity scheme. It is the old kind of sloganeering. It is about slogans, not substance, all of the time in terms of housing policy.

The Government is putting in €4 billion per annum. There were 30,000-odd commencements last year. We only completed 20,000 in 2021 because of the impact of Covid but we are now looking at a much better situation for 2022. That said, we will need consistently in the next decade approximately 33,000 or 35,000 new houses per annum. I get the sense from Sinn Féin's real position that it hates the banks, builders and private home ownership, it seems to me-----

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