Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

Is mór an náire líon na ndaoine sa tír seo atá gan dídean. Níl tithe á dtógáil agus tá an ghéarchéim tithíochta ag dul in olcas. In the face of a worsening housing crisis, yesterday saw more evidence of the Government's failed policies on housing. Let us remind ourselves that last year, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy O'Brien, committed to delivering 9,000 new build social homes and 4,000 affordable homes. However, yesterday it emerged that the Government has delivered just a fraction of those targets in 2022. It has missed targets on both social and affordable new builds. Frankly, this news comes as no surprise, given that we have learned that €1.5 billion of the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage's capital budget was underspent between 2020 and 2022. More than €1 billion of that figure was intended for the delivery of social and affordable homes.

The Oireachtas has returned today after a two-week break. I urge the Taoiseach to put the urgent resolution of the housing crisis at the centre of his focus now. Upon taking office, he set high expectations that substantial progress on housing would be made swiftly but since then, we have seen the same old stale policies repackaged and spun again and again. Indeed, the first sentence of yesterday's Government press release goes as far as to welcome what is, in fact, a failure of delivery and a failure to meet targets. The Government welcomed that failure to meet its own targets, which themselves have been accepted as being much too low, according to the Housing Commission. While we are all familiar with the phrase "running to stand still", homelessness figures are at record highs of 11,742 people while the Government is missing targets that fall short of what is needed. It is neither running nor going anywhere fast. We know the housing crisis is getting worse, not better, and that the unforgivable decision to lift the eviction ban, based on no data and with no contingency plan in place, is going to make things worse for some many. We know from the Residential Tenancies Board that more than 9,000 notices to quit were issued in the second half of last year. The Taoiseach said that leaving the ban in place would have made things worse but he has presented us with no evidence for that. We tabled parliamentary questions and FOI requests; we cannot get any data from the Government. Meanwhile, I am hearing from families in my own constituency who now have no choice but to overhold given that they have received a notice to quit and have nowhere else to go. I am hearing from pensioners who are facing eviction after years of renting the same home. Again, they have nowhere else to go. We are hearing from teachers' unions such as the Irish National Teachers' Organisation, INTO, which are faced with an exodus of teachers from the education system because the teachers cannot afford anywhere to live near their schools. This same exodus is depriving our society and our communities of much-needed highly skilled workers in healthcare, education and construction itself. Young people are being pushed out of cities after received eviction notices while unscrupulous landlords are putting their homes up for short-term rental on Airbnb and other platforms. Does the Taoiseach accept that the Government is out of its depth on housing, that it is simply not meeting the needs of our families and our communities and that the eviction ban decision has made matter worse?

See this speech in context