Gerald Nash (Louth, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate the Taoiseach on his accession again to that office. I wish him and his ministerial colleagues well in their endeavours.

This year, we mark the centenary of the State. The Labour Party has always sought to put our country before the short-term interests of the party. Rarely has this been to our electoral reward. We helped to shape the institutions and stability of a young State under threat. In 1932, the transfer of power to Fianna Fáil, as mentioned earlier by the Taoiseach, was made possible by the Labour Party, in the national interest and the State's interest, at a very dangerous time for this democracy. The Labour Party is a patriotic party. Our contribution to the modernisation of Ireland is a proud one.

The Government, and its predecessor Administration, cannot be proud of these past six, almost seven, years of wasted prosperity and skewed priorities. In a country with bulging coffers, people ask why 250,000 children are experiencing deprivation and why owning a home is beyond the reach of far too many hard-working people. We have record homelessness, record rents and record house prices, yet the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage and everyone else in the previous Government are returning to office without any change in policy. Throughout the past three years, we in the Labour Party have put forward constructive proposals on housing that have been ignored. It is always too little, too late from the Government. It eventually implemented rent freezes and an eviction ban but the action is always taken half-heartedly and in a half-baked fashion. We have argued cogently for more direct State building and increased public investment. Instead, €700 million of capital allocated to the Department of the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, remained unspent at the end of November.

I offer the Taoiseach and his ministerial colleagues a challenge. The reason for our housing crisis is simple. It is caused by a lack of building and a lack of new homes. Rising inflation and supply shortages are impacting on the capacity of the private market to deliver. There is no shortage of planning permissions. In Dublin city alone, there is permission to build nearly 30,000 homes. There is permission to build 5,000 homes in my home town of Drogheda. Speculators and developers are sitting on sites. The market has clearly failed and the Government's plan is failing. Instead of dismantling An Bord Pleanála as its signature policy, trying to strip local authorities of more powers and making democratic participation in our planning system more difficult, I offer the Government the simple idea that the State should simply build more homes and do so quickly.

If we are to believe the Taoiseach's words that he believes in the State, he should use the Land Development Agency to purchase compulsorily the sites with planning permission that remain undeveloped. If he means it when he says he is committed to the State, he must put the full resources of the State into delivering public homes and then pursue the long-term changes necessary to break the cycle of over-reliance on the market. The Government must invest in skills and training and establish a State construction company. It must use the available resources of the State to deliver, once and for all, enough homes.

Only the State - an entrepreneurial State - has the scale and the tools to fix this biggest and most immediate of our problems. The Taoiseach talks about mobilising the State but policy shows that is merely a slogan. The Government's brand of conservatism, rebranded as centrism, is not up to meeting this challenge. Today, we have not a reshuffle but a modest reset from a conservative Government whose suffocating conservatism is so deep-seated that it simply will not be able to meet the biggest challenges of our time. That will be the Government's undoing.

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