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

The reason why is because the Government does not want an election. That is the very definition of cynical.

Therefore, let us just look at the progress this Government has made under the Taoiseach and the Tánaiste. Homelessness has increased in the last two years by 19%, and child homelessness by a staggering 40% in the last 12 months. There are now 5,000 single adults in emergency accommodation funded by the Department of the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage. This is the highest level of single-person homelessness ever recorded in modern times. More than 3,000 children, because of the policies of this Government, will be sleeping tonight in emergency accommodation. We are only days away from breaching the October 2019 peak of the highest level of officially-recognised homelessness in the history of the State.

Rents are sky high. The average for a rental property in this city is €24,000 annually. In the Taoiseach’s constituency, it is €19,000 a year for a standard rental property. Contrary to what the Taoiseach said, the Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, has not increased protections for renters. Last April, he stripped the single most important intervention that led to reductions in family homelessness, namely the ban on evictions. That has led to almost a month-on-month increase. The crisis in the private rental sector is continuing. Not only is that sector shrinking month-on-month because of the Government’s failed policies, but the new rental supply that is coming in, because of the building and planning regulations introduced by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, is locking in high-cost rental in perpetuity. This is why the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, rightly highlighted in a report last week that this Government’s policies, like those of the Governments before, are subjecting an entire generation to the risk of pensioner poverty.

Contrary as well to the claim made by the Minister and Taoiseach their party is about homeownership, every time Fianna Fáil has been in government, with the Taoiseach and the Minister, Deputy Darragh O’Brien, home ownership has plummeted. People's dependence on insecure high-cost rentals has continued. With respect to social housing, we are told that it is going to be the biggest social housing programme in the history of the State. Yet the Minister’s own report at the end of the first quarter of this year stated that the total number of new social homes delivered under the Government's programme is 639, which is just 7% of the total. We are at about the same level as we were last year during Covid-19, when there was a lockdown. Therefore, I do not believe that these targets are going to be met. Even if they are met, that will be 1,000 less than what was promised by the last Government and therefore nowhere near enough. Turning to affordable housing, 65 affordable rentals were provided last year. We may get a couple of hundred affordable purchases this year. That is not a serious commitment to tackling this crisis.

I heard loud heckling from several Deputies from counties in which properties have been affected by defective blocks. They were not so loud last week when the Government-----

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