Pat Buckley (Cork East, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I listened to the Minister's response. From this side of the House, I say Sinn Féin will move heaven and earth to fix the housing crisis. He mentioned shared equity. All I will say about that is that we should look at what happened in the UK when the Government came to collect the tab with the number of suicides. It is a dangerous thing.

What have we got from the Government? We are talking about affordability. Let us start with the children's hospital. There is affordability. I call them bonkers house prices: €425,000 for a four-bedroom house in Midleton - not Darndale, but Midleton. People will be able to afford a home under the Sinn Féin housing policy, and it is the most radical. The Minister must look at it and other speakers said it: we are losing generations. I even spoke to my family and said, the way we are going, we will be taking the shed out of the back garden and dropping two pods into it. That will be the new housing sector under the Government's policy. It needs to get to grips with this.

I commend Deputy Ó Broin on the housing policy he put before the people today. It is the most radical and out of the box when it comes to affordability, being realistic and going back to the old style where families - not houses that are bricks and mortar - lived in homes and passed them on from generation to generation, thereby preserving the mental health and possibly security of the family. I noticed the Government panicked and put a few additional amendments into its countermotion tonight, which just goes to show that it is scrambling. I commend our motion to the House.

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