Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I did mention that it was a new house and I talked about an average three-bedroom house, so let us be clear about that. I also said that it is unacceptable. I genuinely believe that it is unacceptable that a person has to earn €127,000 to buy a new, average three-bedroom house in this city. It is unacceptable that a person has to earn more than €100,000 to buy in Cork where the Minister sitting beside the Taoiseach is from. We have an affordability crisis. The Taoiseach did not mention that the CSO talked last week about the fact that house prices have gone up another 10% in the past 12 months. That is the reality. A sizeable number of people feel locked out of the housing market. The Taoiseach may dismiss the fact that 21,000 young people left to go to Australia last year. That is just one area; they are going to Canada, London and elsewhere. Some of them have done what young people have done before them, to go for adventure and experience, but there is a sense that people are locked out and they have to put their lives on hold because of the runaway house prices that the Government is overseeing.

I asked the Taoiseach a simple question, which he just batted off and saying, "I do not have that information." This goes to the core of the matter. The Government has responsibility for the delivery of social and affordable homes. It had a target of 3,550 to be delivered last year. It produced a glossy 44-page document without a single utterance of whether it has failed to meet its target, the same way it failed to meet its target in every single one of the preceding three years. Will the Government again fail to deliver on its target for affordable homes as it just like it and the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage in their first four years in office?

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