Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We are asking the Minister to declare a housing emergency. It is not just about declaring the emergency, but it is about taking emergency action to resolve the crisis that exists in every constituency across the country. In my constituency of Sligo-Leitrim, rents have risen an average of 6.6% per quarter in the past year. Rent is €1,098, on average, in County Leitrim, which is where the lowest rents of the country are. That is unaffordable for the vast majority of working people. The increase in Sligo is even higher. This is happening across the entire country, yet the Minister and the Government are trying to tell us that their plan is working. Who is it working for? It is not working for the people who come into my constituency office. It is not working for the woman, a single mother with two children, who rang me last week. She received a notice to leave after the house she was renting was sold and she had to leave. She could find nowhere to go. She moved in with her sister and her sister's husband. She is now living in a spare room where she will spend Christmas. She has no options or choices. She cannot get on to the council housing list because she works in a nursing home and is slightly above the income threshold of €26,000.

These issues are not being dealt with by the Government. The so-called housing plan is a plan for big developers and corporate interests to come in and buy up houses across the country and charge huge rents to ordinary decent people who cannot afford them. There are people who cannot survive without intervention and that intervention has to come from the Government. It is clear the proposals tabled by Sinn Féin and the Opposition umbrella group are seeking change. The Government must look to a different way forward. It has to find a new way that will deliver for people. That way forward must include the building of more social and affordable houses, and to make sure they are truly affordable. A house that is way beyond the reach of ordinary working people is not affordable. The Government continues to call them affordable. When Sinn Féin councillors from different parts of the country express concerns about this, the Government says they are objecting to houses. The only people who objected to houses in my constituency were Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors. There were ten social houses being built in my town of Ballinamore. When they were being proposed at the council meeting, local Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael councillors were the only ones who objected to them. Yet, the Government continues to trot out this idea that somehow the Opposition is the problem. The problem is the Minister's policies, because he is failing not just this generation but the next.

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