Cian O'Callaghan (Dublin Bay North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I do not need to tell the Minister that, in the real world, under his position and tenure, rents, house prices, the number of people in their 20s and 30s still living in their childhood bedrooms, and homelessness are at record levels. Under his tenure, we now also have a record level of the housing budget's capital spend not being spent and being reallocated, sent back to the Exchequer or carried over. That is some level of records.

On paying down local authority debt, the Minister knows that money was allocated to build real homes that people were meant to move into this year. Instead, some of it was diverted to paying down loans. If that was such a good idea, why did he not decide to do it at the start of the year? He decided to do it towards the end of the year, when he was failing to spend the money he was allocated to build homes. What will he do to ensure this not happen again? Every year he has been Minister, hundreds of millions of euro have been carried over into the following year, which were meant to be spent building homes.

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