Pauline Tully (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There is a section of the population who just cannot afford to buy a home in Ireland today. This cohort, often called the squeezed middle, would say they pay for everything and are entitled to nothing, but house prices continue to spiral upwards. The CSO residential property price index report for February 2022 shows that house prices across the State have risen by 13.5% and the median new-build house price for first-time buyers is now €335,000. That is not affordable for most people. The Minister's response is a five-year total target for local authority affordable housing delivery of 5,555 houses. It is dreadfully unambitious. An entire generation is locked out of homeownership and the Government is only funding local authorities to build 7,550 affordable houses between now and 2026.

Worse still is that the Government seems to think that there is no housing crisis in many parts of the country. In my constituency, for example, not one of these 7,550 affordable houses is to be delivered in either Cavan or Monaghan, and yet the Daft.ie house price report of 2022 shows an 18.2% year-on-year average house price increase in Cavan from quarter 1 of last year to quarter 2 of 2022 and a 15.87% year-on-year increase in Monaghan for the same period. People simply cannot afford to get on the housing ladder.

People who lost their home to relationship breakdown or mortgage repossession face an uncertain future in the private rental sector. Increasingly, the alternative option of renting is not possible for many people. The latest report from the Residential Tenancies Board indicates that rent increases for new tenancies grew by 9% State-wide in the last three months of 2021. Once again, if I refer to my constituency counties of Cavan and Monaghan, rents increased by 6.6% and 15.5%, respectively, over the same period.

The Government is not doing enough. The affordable purchase targets are embarrassingly low. Only 18 counties are included in the targets. The rest, like Cavan and Monaghan, will have zero delivery of local authority affordable housing. We need an average of at least 4,000 genuinely affordable houses for working people each year and we need them built by each local authority. I ask the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, to do something to help the many people who cannot afford to buy a house. They cannot afford to rent. They are not eligible for HAP or the rental accommodation scheme, RAS. They are not eligible for any rent supplement. They are forced to live with their parents. In this day and age, it is disgraceful.

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