Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

Saturday, 17 December is the day the new Taoiseach will be elected. The Cost of Living Coalition has called a demonstration outside the Dáil for that day. It is a very broad group of trade unions, students unions, disability groups, anti-poverty and housing groups and believes we do not need a new Taoiseach but a new Government. If there was not enough evidence of that need, we have had further evidence of it today with the Bank and Payments Federation Ireland, BPFI, report that shames this Government. It shows we have seen four and a half times the rate of increase in rents when compared with the rest of Europe. This has resulted in average rents in my area of €2,400 and average rents in Dublin of €2,200. These are totally unaffordable for a whole generation of young and working people, who are now being driven out of the country. On top of that, we had the Goodbody report last week that showed commencements of new-build apartments and houses have dropped very significantly in the last few months. I do not know how the Minister can say Housing for All is working. Apartment commencements have dropped by 29% and house commencements by 23%.

We got another report today from Citizens Information and the Disability Federation of Ireland showing that people with disabilities, mental health problems and other very ill and vulnerable people are not being given anything like appropriate housing. I raised last week how it is taking about a year for a person in my area to get a medical assessment of housing need. Very sick and vulnerable people are not being housed at all or are being put in utterly inappropriate conditions.

Against this background, it is beyond belief that at the end of this year, the Government will have underspent the housing budget by €700 million and it claims this is a success for the Housing for All plan. I got some figures from Mel Reynolds, the housing commentator, this week. I will put these to the Minister as questions he might wonder about the answers to. Does he know how many new council houses Dublin City Council built in the first half of this year? Guess.

It was zero. Does the Minister know how many new council houses Fingal County Council built in the first six months of this year?

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