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

I do not want to say we told you so but we do need to see actual delivery of homes. It is not good enough for the Minister, Deputy Ryan to say you are warming up after so many years in government. Absent from that announcement was any real commitment to increase the State's resourcing to ensure delivery of the supply of public, social and affordable housing that people need across communities. Instead, we saw yet more reliance on the private sector, the staple of the Fine Gael diet. Rather than restricting evictions, Deputy Harris prefers another renters’ credit. Of what use to renters is getting less than one month’s rent back when you live in permanent fear of losing your home and permanent fear of eviction, as so many of our constituents do? Rather than State action, the Minister, Deputy Harris, prefers more subsidies for developers, waiving development levies. When that approach has failed in the past eight years, how can it deliver change now? Instead of making homes more affordable, the reality is that prices are at record highs. Now is not the time for the Government to double down on bad policy. The housing disaster is the civil rights issue of this generation. Indeed it is multigenerational. We all know this. It cuts across and affects every generation and every community. On day one, the incoming Taoiseach should recognise that by committing to end no-fault evictions to make renters safe, by regulating short term lets, by transforming the Land Development Agency into a truly effective State construction company, and by delivering 50,000 new builds and 50,000 deep retrofits each year, with adequate provision within that of social and affordable homes. We can find enough construction workers to deliver this but, as a Minister, the incoming Taoiseach would not even pay apprentices the minimum wage, let alone mount a proactive campaign to recruit construction workers.

In the section of his address on the climate, the incoming Taoiseach assured that Fine Gael would not lecture voters on climate action, perhaps a barb about some of his Government colleagues. In fairness, he made good on that commitment right away. The section on climate action was dropped from the speech - no lecturing, not a word. This does not bode well for commitment within Government to a cleaner environment, for cheaper bills, better public transport or warmer homes. Indeed, the passage that was on the cutting room floor made no reference to really effective climate action measures such as supports for retrofitting homes. The closest we saw was a promise to farmers that the Government knows it cannot keep on the nitrates derogation. That irony will not be wasted on many farmers after two consecutive wet seasons due to climate change.

Lofty promises, devoid of substance, are a feature of other areas too. Deputy Harris boasted of his party’s achievements in healthcare, but that praise jars with the experiences of so many people who have told me about spending hours or even days on hospital trolleys. It jars with the experiences of healthcare staff who are running on empty, suffering the consequences of low pay and the HSE recruitment embargo. Of course, it is contradicted by Fine Gael's pitting of employers against workers when it comes to policies like sick pay, or its delaying of our Bill to provide for reproductive healthcare leave following pregnancy loss.

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