Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I challenge the Minister to publish it tomorrow. He should put it in the public domain tomorrow and then provide Government time next week for us to have a proper debate on it.

Let us examine the Minister's plan. He says his targets are being met; however, if the targets are deliberately designed to be so low, ignoring the deficit that has existed, it is hardly surprising he is meeting them. The Minister and the Taoiseach said today that the Government is going to increase the targets. This is too little too late; the targets should have been the right ones from the outset.

What is also important is that for every single programme the Minister is directly responsible for, he has missed his targets. More than 9,000 new-build social homes that he promised have not been built. That is more than the total number of households currently in emergency accommodation funded by the Department. If the Government had kept its promise regarding the homes, many of the families and single people in emergency accommodation would not be homeless and the numbers would be falling.

The Minister says he has made progress on delivering affordable homes. He was 52% shy of his target for 2022 and 61% shy last year. There are paltry numbers: just over 1,000 two years ago and fewer than 1,500 last year. What is worse is the price. Can anybody guess the all-in cost to the purchaser of one of the Minister's affordable homes in a Government-funded affordable housing scheme in his constituency? According to Fingal County Council, it is €565,000. That is assuming house prices do not increase; if they do, the homeowners or their children will be paying even more.

What about the Minister's cost-rental homes? To correct the Minister, cost-rental homes existed in the founding decade of the State. What the current Government has done is take an eminently sensible concept and mangled it beyond belief. How do we know? With regard to the Land Development Agency, the rent for a one-bed unit in my constituency is €1,400. That is more than the rent for an existing renter. What is the rent for a three-bed unit? It is almost €1,800 per month. The Minister's cost-rental units are more expensive than the rents being paid by many of us living in the private rental sector. That is not progress.

Let us deal with private homeownership. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael love to tell us they are the parties of homeownership. Nothing could be further from the truth. Last year, approximately 8,500 new-build homes went on the market for people to buy. That is fewer than the year before and almost the same as in 2019. Admittedly, new-build output is increasing, but year on year an ever-growing number of new builds are going to expensive build-to-rent institutional investors, crippling working people with high rents and making them unable to save for a mortgage. The Minister stated 500 first-time buyers are drawing down a mortgage each week – that is the figure from Banking and Payments Federation Ireland – but the vast majority of those buying second-hand homes, even with the inflationary subsidies, cannot buy new homes. They are buying those second-hand homes farther and farther from where they live and work and where their children go to school. What is the Government imposing on them? It is imposing on them huge commutes, entailing additional financial burdens, not to mention environmental burdens.

The problem is this: while the Minister talks about commencements, the number of completions is down. In the first quarter of this year, the number of completions was down 12% by comparison with the same quarter last year. People live in completed homes, not commencement certificates. In Dublin, new home completions are down 25% and apartment completions are down 32%. The Minister is right that the number of completion certificates has increased. I suspect that many of the developments will not actually commence and that many of the projects will take two years plus to complete, which is no consolation to the people in acute need.

The Minister's greatest legacy is probably homelessness. He will be remembered as the Minister for homelessness. Month after month, the number of adults, children, pensioners and families in emergency accommodation has increased. Coming in here and telling us week after week and month after month that addressing the problem is his number one priority when everything he does is making the homelessness crisis worse is a sad joke. There are alternatives, which we have outlined time and again. The Housing Commission has outlined them. What we need is a radical reset of housing policy. We will not get that from this Government and that is why we need an election, a change of Government and a Sinn Féin housing plan that will deliver the radical policy reset.

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