Kathleen Funchion (Carlow-Kilkenny, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I thank my colleague, Deputy Ó Broin, for bringing forward this Bill. Exactly seven years and one week ago, I made my first speech in the Dáil. That speech was on the housing crisis. When I was preparing for tonight, I felt I could have dusted off that speech and used it again but for the fact that matters are an awful lot worse. In the intervening seven years - the Minister of State might be very interested in this - Sinn Féin and its housing spokesperson have introduced countless items of legislation, motions and policy papers. Every year in our alternative budgets, Deputy Ó Broin, our housing spokesperson since 2016, puts forward our vision for housing. All of that is there, easily accessible, for the Minister of State to look at.

It seems that under the watch of the Minister of State and the senior Minister, the Government is fiddling while Rome burns. Their so-called solutions are not meeting the minimum needed to catch up on decades of under-investment. In recent weeks, we have heard the Minister of State and his colleagues talk ad nauseamabout the tenant in situscheme. In my constituency, Carlow County Council has approval to purchase ten properties and Kilkenny County Council has approval to purchase 25 properties under the tenant in situ scheme. That is the information the local authorities have.

See this speech in context