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

The Minister's press conference yesterday to announce the detail of his budget was a very apt metaphor for his term of office. Just as he started to make overinflated claims about his success, the alarm bells started to ring and he, his fellow Ministers, departmental staff and the assembled media had to be evicted. What that tells us of course is the gap between the Minister's claims and delivery on the ground is growing ever wider.

With the greatest of respect to the Minister, it takes a certain brass neck to claim that his plan is working when house prices and rents continue to rise and homelessness is at historic levels and set to rise further, and social and affordable housing targets are being missed for the third year in a row. One of the first things we need to hear from the Minister at some point is how much of this year's budget he will not spend. We know there is a €240 million carryover from capital spending from last year to this year, but we are only allowed to carry over 10%, so what is the total underspend that the Minister was not able to deliver this year on top of a similar failure last year?

The Minister likes to hide behind Covid, Ukraine, inflation and supply issues, but the private sector has rebounded. The private sector is able to meet and exceed its targets, yet we are way behind in social and affordable housing. The reason is not because of any of the excuses the Minister gives, but matters that are in his gift to reform such as the four-stage approval process and the procurement and tendering rules, yet he has done nothing to address that.

The Minister has a penchant for quoting large numbers. If we read the budget book, however, it tells us that the total extra capital spend for housing next year compared with this year is a paltry €37.9 million. That is in the budget book. The Minister knows that as well as I do. His failure to deliver any significant extra capital spend for genuine social and affordable housing will have an impact on delivery. Social housing targets were only at 7% at the end of the first quarter. The second quarter's report has mysteriously not appeared, even though we should be getting the third quarter report. Worse than that is the fact that the Minister has not rolled over the lost social housing units from his missed targets in 2020, 2021, and 2022 into subsequent years. It means there is a gaping hole in his social housing plan, a key contributor to rising levels of homelessness.

Likewise with affordable housing, it is way behind target, but the Minister's cost-rental equity loan targets for next year are less than this year's. The Minister did not include in the budget book what the affordable housing fund targets are going to be for next year and, as a consequence of the under-supply from the local authority and the approved housing body sector he is going to be over-reliant on the LDA. That is the very same LDA that is to deliver 1,000 cost rental and affordable homes this year and, at best, will deliver a few hundred.

We need at least 8,000 affordable homes a year, including 4,000 affordable-purchase homes because, unlike the Minister, who says he believes in home ownership but only for people on €100,000 or more a year, I believe in home ownership as well as affordable rental and social rental for ordinary working people, which is something the Minister is not delivering.

There are historic highs relating to homelessness. We could be approaching an official figure of 11,000, and there is not a single additional initiative to prevent homelessness or to move people on. We must consider following Nicola Sturgeon's move in Scotland and introduce a ban on winter evictions. We also need an acceleration of the tenants in situ scheme and an increase in Housing First. I hope it does not happen, but the question for the Minister is what he will do if we get a report from his Department in the coming months with an official homeless figure of 11,000.

With respect to defects, the Government was very silent in its letter to homeowners yesterday that it had only increased its own capital investment in defects by €5 million. I accept there is a levy. I have called for one for a long time, but in fact the more detail we hear from the Minister for Finance, the more it seems that the Government is taking a good idea and doing it badly. It will be hard-pressed homeowners in Donegal and Mayo who will pay the additional cost and not banks, large-profited developers or those responsible for defects.

With respect to the Sinn Féin alternative budget, it is clear the Minister has not read it. First, the parliamentary questions on which this is based are already published. They are on oireachtas.ie. They are from the Department and they are 2022 costings, but because we like to have a belt-and-braces approach to our numbers, we also availed of the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform's service. It gave us real-time costings for everything. Not only am I happy to publish them, but why do we not have a debate in a town hall anywhere in this country where we can set out our stalls?

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