Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

The Taoiseach told his Ard-Fheis that he would move mountains to get the children out of the box room and into a home of their own. We know what the consequences for the children are of being in the box room. The NYCI report talks about over half of young people having low mental well-being, precisely because they are stuck in the box room with no prospect of having a home or space to themselves. We know why we have got to this point. In essence, it is because we have had housing policy driven by a perverse version of trickle-down economics. It is the idea of giving money and incentives to developers and big landlords and hoping that will get the market moving and get housing going. It has not worked up until this point and the housing crisis has got worse and worse.

The indications of Deputy Harris's reign as Taoiseach marking any sort of turning of the page on that are not good. One of the first decisions it seems the Taoiseach has made, and he might confirm it, has been to extend the waiver of development levies. He might say how much that is going to cost the State. Originally one year, so I presume also another year, was going to cost in excess of €300 million. That is €300 million which could be public money, which could be sitting in local authorities and used to build housing. Instead, it is being left in the pockets of big developers. This is not the way to address the housing crisis. This is the way that has been tried and failed over and over again. Instead of giving public money to private developers, we need to actually build and retrofit homes on a significant scale.

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