Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

For those who are not convinced by the Taoiseach's answer, the housing protest will be outside Customs House at 2.30 p.m. this Saturday. I hope people will come out onto the streets for it.

No one disputes that there will be a private sector in housing, but the private sector should not be subsidised at the expense of delivering the social and affordable housing that it is incapable of delivering. The majority of Government policy is about giving subsidies to private developers and speculators who are incapable and unwilling to deliver affordable housing at the expense of the social and affordable housing we actually need. That is a crazy policy. The Government needs to accept that current house prices and rents are unaffordable for approximately 60% to 70% of ordinary working people. The market the Government subsidises and incentivises by pouring billions of euro into the private sector’s pockets is not delivering housing that is affordable. Therefore, the Government needs a radical reset. That is what the commission report says. Admit the policy is failing, break from it, reset and begin to direct the State’s resources, which are plentiful, towards building social and affordable housing and controlling the obscene rents being charged by these property investment funds and corporate landlords.

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