Ruairi Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

One of my colleagues brought up the fact that all of us do clinics, or most of us in this House do. A considerable number of people come to us during those clinics. I have always found the Minister of State to be a reasonable man, but I am not sure what he can say to the people who come through his door. I am not entirely sure what I can offer to them when they come through my door, other than to do my best and promise them we will be a government that will, if given the opportunity, have those people's backs. That is a trite statement people use, but let us be realistic. Everyone has stated it, in that the figures, key performance indictors, KPIs, and everything that possibly matters are going the wrong way. More than 12,000 people are homeless. We are talking about home ownership, but a considerable number of people are absolutely knocked out of the market at this point in time.

To rent in Dundalk and its surrounds, after we go on daft.ie as part of the usual craic we do, there are eight properties available for €1,700, €1,750, or even €2,800.

People paying that sort of money on rent then need to attempt to put a deposit together to buy one of these houses that appear on that website at €300,000, €400,000 or €485,000. It is all Monopoly money.

We have a pile of statistics on what the Government has not delivered in County Louth, whether it is cost rental, affordable or local authority house provision. The fact is there is absolute failure to deliver, which is completely on this Government's watch. People cannot get a local authority house. If they can get mortgage approval, people cannot even consider buying at the prices we are talking about. I do not know how they will be able to put deposits together. We will get figures from the Minister, the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach, but none of it cuts the mustard at this point in time. Let us be absolutely clear we are talking about a failure of Government to deliver homes.

The Minister of State can talk about ideological this and ideological that but I just have a notion that the Government just did not take this seriously enough early enough. It might be doing so now but there is nothing but absolute failure. Either it does not care or it is just pure and utter ineptitude. We need change of policy and we really need a change of government because this is not working for anybody out there.

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