Holly Cairns (Cork South West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I want to start by thanking all of the staff in the Houses of the Oireachtas. This is a uniquely fraught and adversarial working environment and it is somehow made pleasant by all of you, so I thank them very much.

On the last day of the Thirty-third Dáil, as we prepare for an election, people will be thinking about who they are going to vote for. I hope people will be wary of political parties that have a track record of broken promises. For example, in the last election campaign you promised to deliver 50,000 affordable purchase homes. After nearly five years in government, how many of them have been delivered? Less than 1,000, that is, 988 to be precise. That is just 2% of the Government's target. Last year no affordable purchase homes were delivered in 19 of the 31 council areas. In Dublin City Council not one affordable purchase home was delivered, nor in Galway city and county, Louth, Clare or Wicklow. I could go on. Even in those areas where a small number of affordable homes were built, the prices were nowhere near affordable. In Lusk in north Dublin, the full price of so-called affordable homes is in excess of €550,000, more than half a million euro. How can one call that an affordable home? This is not just an abuse of language, it is a con.

These broken promises come at a huge personal cost to many people. Every week, I meet people whose dreams of homeownership are crushed, people in their 20s, 30s and 40s who are still living in their childhood bedrooms, others who are still cramped in house shares because they cannot afford to rent alone. They are people who work hard and do not expect a whole lot in return. They are not looking for mansions, just a modest home, a secure roof over their head, somewhere they can start to build a life and family and put down roots in a community. Whatever they do, it is not enough. I find the worst is when I meet people and they feel their housing insecurity is a personal failure. I want to say very clearly to those people, you have done nothing wrong. You have been failed by this Government and by previous Governments that have turned a housing crisis into a complete housing disaster and have broken commitment after commitment.

This election is an opportunity for people to choose a new approach and vote for something different. The Social Democrats has a fully costed plan to deliver 50,000 affordable purchase homes. To ensure these homes are genuinely affordable, we would support the not-for-profit housing bodies and local authorities to build them, including in early stage finance.

To deliver this, we would zone land specifically for affordable housing and give the LDA powers to acquire that land by compulsory purchase order, CPO.

Does the Tánaiste at least acknowledge that he did not keep that promise he made to voters? How did Fianna Fáil's definition of an "affordable home" increase by €300,000?

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