Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

At the weekend, the Taoiseach said that when it comes to housing policy, his highest priority is home ownership. I think lots of people, especially people of my generation, find that literally impossible to believe. Fine Gael in government has literally done the opposite to increasing home ownership. Not that anyone needed any more evidence of this but today, we have more of it from the census. The rate of home ownership fell from nearly 70% in 2016 to just 66% last year.

We know this inability to buy a home is not spread evenly among the population. People in their 20s, 30s and 40s are disproportionately locked out of home ownership. Does the Taoiseach know that in 2006, which is the year before he was elected to the Dáil, the average age of a first-time buyer in Ireland was 29? Last year, the average age of young people who finally managed to move out of their parents' home was 28 and, therefore, we have gone from young people aspiring to home ownership to people finding it increasingly difficult to even move out of their childhood bedrooms at the same age, yet the Taoiseach still claims with a straight face that Fine Gael is somehow the party of home ownership. I do not honestly know who he thinks he is kidding but I can tell him that people have had enough of that kind of spin. Fine Gael has been in office for 12 years. At what point does he think the party will take some responsibility for the fact that its approach is not working? It is difficult to know when it has yet to even acknowledge the fact that its approach is not working. Meanwhile the share of 25 to 34-year-olds who own their own home more than halved between 2004 and 2019 plummeting from just 60% to 27%.

The fact is Fine Gael cannot blame anybody else for this miserable record. The best it can maybe do is blame its coalition partners Fianna Fáil. The saddest part is that it is not the Government that is paying the price for this failure. Tens of thousands of people all over the country regularly wonder, "What if?" What if they had been able to buy a modest home at the same their parents were able to? What would their lives look like now? What kind of opportunities could they have availed of? Would relationships have lasted? Would they have children now? Would their mental health be better? Would they have been able to save for their retirement?

I regularly speak to young people whose anger has now become weariness. They have witnessed so much failure and have been so angry for so long that they are now weary and exhausted. They are tired of broken promises and the ridiculous spin that the Government can fix this housing disaster. They now wonder what will become of them when they are older and cannot afford to pay rent on their pensions. All the while, the Taoiseach is trying to frame its party as the party of home ownership. Does he accept that he has presided over a continuing collapse in home ownership rates? Is he going to continue trying to frame Fine Gael as the party of home ownership when all of the evidence points to the opposite? Does he think people fall for that spin?

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