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

Go raibh maith agat. Yesterday, the Taoiseach said something quite extraordinary. He said the reason there is a struggle to spend the housing budget is because it is so large. He then said that the large budget, much of which is unspent, is evidence of a commitment to addressing the housing crisis. Therefore, the Government's failure to spend the housing budget is now being used as evidence of its dedication to resolving the housing crisis. How much longer can the Taoiseach keep trying to dress up failure as success? Does he really think anyone is buying this? This kind of bizarre and self-serving spin actually explains quite a lot about the Government's inability to deal with the housing disaster.

The Taoiseach is not alone in this. Pretty much every senior Minister in his Government repeatedly tells us that a record housing budget means the Government is serious about solving the housing crisis. We know that a whopping 25% of that budget, €1 billion, went unspent last year. Much of this underspend was in the capital allocation which was supposed to be spent on affordable housing. The failure to spend this budget is especially unforgivable when we know that a chronic lack of affordable supply is at the very heart of the housing disaster.

People on average incomes, many of whom are trapped in insecure tenancies and are paying extortionate rents, simply cannot afford to buy their own homes. The Threshold report, as published today, provides more evidence of this. Nearly 60% of renters are renting because they cannot afford to buy their own homes. After 12 years of Fine Gael in government, these people are increasingly losing hope that they will ever be able to afford a place of their own. They are relying on the Taoiseach's Government to meet its affordable housing targets but it is failing them. This is because those targets are not worth the paper they are written on and are being missed by a huge margin.

Last year, the Taoiseach's Government said that it would deliver 4,100 affordable homes but just 323 affordable purchase homes were actually delivered, in the midst of the worst housing disaster in the history of the State. This is pathetic. We know this Government is not short on money, so allocating large sums to housing is not difficult. What the Government is short on is a housing plan that will actually deliver for those at the coalface of the housing disaster. Is the Taoiseach worried about the failure to spend 25% of the housing budget last year? Is any analysis of the failure to spend such a large proportion of the budget being carried out? Does he expect the full housing budget to be spent this year?

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