Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his comments. At least he had the good grace to deal with the substance of the motion, although we may disagree on the points. His speech was in stark contrast to the earlier speech of his senior Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, which hardly mentioned either the private rental sector crisis or the specific points in this motion. He had nothing to say about what he was going to do to stop rising rents. He had nothing to say at all about how he was going to reduce the cost of renting. He had nothing to say about increasing real security of tenure and nothing about the very low output of affordable cost-rental housing this year, next year and into the year after. Again, he completely avoided responding to requests for clarification about the crucial tenant in situprogramme to stop families on HAP and RAS with notices to quit becoming homeless. There was nothing at all about the rapidly shrinking private rental sector as accidental and semi-professional landlords leave in droves. Interestingly, he also had nothing at all to say about his deeply regrettable comments about migrants on "On the Record" with Gavan Reilly on Sunday.

I intended to say this while the Ceann Comhairle was still here. The debate earlier got heated but that is because, in our constituency offices, there is so much fear, anxiety, frustration and anger at the deepening housing crisis. I am sure it is the same across the Chamber. It would be strange if that did not spill over into our debates at times. What really frustrated me about the Minister is that he made a series of misleading claims, so I will correct the record. I would have preferred it if he were here for this. I appreciate that he is a busy man but it is important that his claims do not go uncorrected. Supply in and of itself will not fix the problem. It is not only about supply. We need the right kind of supply in the right place at the right price. If we do not have sufficient affordable supply, particularly in the coming years, then an increase in the number of homes will not necessarily reduce rents and house prices, or tackle homelessness.

The Minister repeated the claim that the Government is spending €4 billion on public housing this year. That is not true. One can look at the budget book. There is just under €1.5 billion of direct capital investment through Government programmes for the delivery of social and affordable homes. I do not know why the Minister keeps misleading the house. He again claimed that the Government delivered 9,000 social homes last year. That is not true. One can look at the Department's website. There were just over 5,000 new builds and just over 1,000 acquisitions, which is just over 6,000, which is 30% less than what the Minister claimed. The Minister repeated the untruth that the Opposition opposes the building of social and affordable homes. He was corrected by The Journal'sexcellent fact-check on the matter and knows very well that what the Opposition had opposed is the gifting of public land at low or no cost to private developers where the affordable homes on those sites will sell for more than €400,000. We make no apology for that.

The Minister claimed that Sinn Féin is against home ownership. The irony is that the Minister of State, Deputy English, used to have battles with the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, when Deputy English was at the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, because Deputy English rightly used to point out that home ownership falls most rapidly under Fianna Fáil Governments. In our alternative budget, we would have delivered more than double the number of affordable purchase homes funded by this Government.

I strongly disagree with the Minister about the Constitution. I do not believe there would be a constitutional or legal challenge. We will continue to have that debate. He is right that rent relief in and of itself would be inflationary, which is why we called for a three-year ban on rent increases, along with the rent relief, to make sure that that does not happen.

The number of commencements has increased. The problem is that many are large apartment developments that will take two to three years to complete. Are we seriously saying that people will have to wait for two to three years before that supply starts to come online? Planning permission numbers have increased but last year we had more than 80,000 active planning permissions, but only a fraction were being built. Planning permission does not guarantee the delivery of much-needed homes.

The Minister misrepresented our position on shared equity and help-to-buy. We oppose them because they are inflationary. We are not the only people who think that. The only people who have not got the memo on that are the Government. Almost all independent agencies share our concerns.

On Sinn Féin's proposals, we put together a detailed alternative budget each year. We will do so again in September. We set out clearly how to fund the delivery of 20,000 public homes, including 4,000 affordable cost rental homes and 4,000 affordable purchase homes, which is more than double what is in the Government's proposals. In the meantime, renters need a break. We have to stop rents from increasing, to put money back in renters' pockets, to give tenants real security of tenure, to end inferior build-to-rent design standards and, crucially, we have to develop thousands of cost-rental units, not the hundreds that the Minister spoke about earlier in the debate. That is not in the Government's plan and until it is, this rental crisis will deepen. That is why I commend the motion to the House and oppose the Minister's amendment.

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