Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It is one designed to prop up extortionate house prices and to saddle people with additional debt, and the Taoiseach boasts that people in desperation will reach for that measure. That is nauseating.

The scourge of homelessness is back to record levels. People in families who never thought that they would ever be in such an horrific situation find themselves in emergency accommodation, if they can get emergency accommodation. Children still grow up in hotels and bed and breakfast accommodation robbed of a decent childhood. For any state that calls itself a republic, one child in homelessness is a scandal but hundreds of children homeless is a damning indictment of those in power. All the while, thousands of households continue to languish on social housing waiting lists desperate for the home in which they can build their lives and they watch on as thousands of homes are left vacant throughout the State.

This housing disaster is an affront to the message of equality contained in the Proclamation that hangs outside this Chamber. Rather than lining up to vote confidence in themselves, Government Members might, for once, do some self-reflection because this housing disaster was created by them and it is sustained by them, and yet they remain wedded to the housing policies that created this mess in the first place and feathered the nests of well-got developers, wealthy investors and big landlords at the expense of ordinary people in housing need. The dogs on the street know and can see that the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, has failed abysmally.

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