Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste gave an interview at the weekend that caused a lot of anger. He said young people considering emigrating because of the extortionate housing costs could find the grass is always greener. He said if they go to a successful busy city, they will find the same high rents as here but the rents could be lower if they went to "a very rural area or a third or fourth tier city".

Does the Tánaiste know we have the highest housing costs in the EU? Housing costs here are an astonishing 88.5% higher than the EU average. Unless the Tánaiste considers places like Paris and Rome fourth tier, he does not know what he is talking about.

Since he made those comments, young people living abroad have reacted with utter astonishment. Today's Irish Independent contains interviews with five young people living all over the world who were stunned by the Tánaiste's remarks. Evan McGloughlin, who is aged 24, said he has doubled his standard of living and halved his living costs by moving to Barcelona and 22-year-old Caitlin Grant is doing a masters in the Netherlands and her rent in a house share is €365 a month. Meanwhile the Group Chat podcast was inundated with stories of young people living abroad who were outraged by what the Tánaiste had to say. One contributor living in Berlin said the latest housing innovation in Dublin is shed-sits - sheds where the rent is more than €1,000 per month - and I could go on.

The latest daft.iereport shows that the average rent across the country is nearly €1,700 per month and a staggering €2,300 per month in Dublin. Those prices are unaffordable to 90% of workers. What will the Government to do about it? The Government has made many promises on housing and it has broken almost every single one. House prices are higher than they have ever been. Rents have never been higher and homelessness has never been higher. We are dreading the updated homelessness figures tomorrow, which are likely to show another record increase. Increasingly, children are growing up in homelessness. On every objective metric when it comes to housing, the Government is failing miserably. No amount of gaslighting by the Tánaiste or other Ministers will change that.

Yesterday he talked about a whole-of-government approach being needed to tackle this housing crisis. He said it is the role of the role of the Department of the Taoiseach to drive that forward. Given that the Tánaiste will soon be Taoiseach and leading that Department, I want to ask him a few questions on his approach. What specifically will he do as Taoiseach to drive the Government's response to the housing crisis? What will he expect from other Departments to address the housing emergency? When can we expect to see results in lower homelessness and more affordable rents and housing prices? Is the Tánaiste saying the current Taoiseach has not been doing enough to deliver on housing?

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