Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

For all of the bluff and bluster from Government Deputies, they cannot hide from the plain fact that its housing policies and its Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage are failing.

Far from resolving the housing emergency, the Minister denies that there is an emergency at all. The emergency was not of the Minister's making, although his party played a starring role, but he has singularly failed to get to grips with it. On all the parameters that matter to real people, the figures do not lie. We have the highest levels of homelessness since records began and they are getting worse. We have the highest house prices on record and they are getting worse. We have the highest rents in the history of the State and they continue to soar. The Minister has established himself as the Harry Kane of Irish politics; missing targets and missing them wildly. The Minister has an advantage over Mr. Kane, however, because he simply moves the goalposts by setting targets that he knows go nowhere near the level of output that is required to resolve the daily crisis that is the lived housing reality of too many of our citizens.

The Members opposite know all of this but no doubt the Minister will receive the support of the Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Green Party Deputies this evening, with some of them probably holding out vain hope of a nod for a position as a Minister of State this Saturday. Make no mistake about it but were this motion to be decided by those trapped in the limbo of emergency accommodation, by Ireland's fleeced renters, by those on social housing lists waiting for years, with many more years of waiting to come, by young people desperately trying to buy their first home or by the thousands of others who have lost hope and have again scattered to the four corners of the world in search of a better life, then there would be no contest. It would be a clear and emphatic no confidence vote in this Government. There would be no confidence in its failed housing policies or this Minister.

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