Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I have consistently said that housing is the number one social issue facing our country and it is a priority of this Government. I also said that the Housing for All plan is the most substantive plan document detailed of any plan that has been produced by anyone in this House. No Opposition party has come near it in terms of its detail, variety, breadth and depth. The bottom line is progress has been made. However, for many people, we need to build more houses and build them faster. I have always acknowledged that.

Since this Government came to power, there has been very significant delivery. On social housing alone, more than 18,000 new social homes have been added to the social housing stock under this Government up to quarter 2 of 2022. This year we are targeting an extra 10,000 social houses between build, lease and acquisition. That is on a scale that has not been seen for decades. Not in the first two decades of this century has that scale of social housing been seen. Progress is being made. However, I am very clear that we need to make more progress than that.

On affordable housing schemes, very significant initiatives have been taken. I refer to Sinn Féin's alternative budget, for example.

The Deputy has talked about people who are distressed and I acknowledge that people are in distress. However, under its alternative budget, Sinn Féin would have abolished the help-to-buy scheme, which has supported over 35,000 home buyers. Those are ordinary young people who wanted to buy their first homes. Sinn Féin would scrap the first home scheme, which has been introduced in recent months. It provides an equity share up to 30% in a new property. There are already 640 approvals under that scheme. What would Deputy McDonald say to the Jameses, Marys and Johns who have got those approvals? What would she say to the 35,000 people who got help under the help-to-buy scheme? Sinn Féin would also eliminate the new vacant and derelict property grants of €50,000. There are 419 applicants for that scheme. We are expanding that scheme to rural areas and city centres. Sinn Féin would scrap that scheme despite the fact it will help many people.

Through affordable housing schemes and Croí Cónaithe, we are making significant gains in respect of affordable housing. That is the bottom line. Sinn Féin has now become the party of catastrophe. That is how it labels itself. I have to put it to the Deputy that if she is sincere in her description of the housing situation as an emergency - and I am saying it is the biggest social issue we have - she must reconcile how the Sinn Féin Party can vote against 1,200 social, affordable and private homes in Ballymastone and Donabate. Some 253 of those homes were intended as social homes and another 253 were to be affordable homes. How could Sinn Féin vote against 853 public homes on Oscar Traynor Road in November 2021 if it is the emergency Deputy McDonald says it is? How could Sinn Féin vote against what was then 768 homes in O'Devaney Gardens in 2019? There are now 1,000 homes, including 275 social homes and 248 affordable homes.

Let us think about the language that Deputy McDonald has been using for the last number of months on housing, "emergency" and "catastrophe", and yet she herself objected to 1,600 apartments on the grounds of Clonliffe College, 10% of which are social housing.

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