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

I join with other colleagues in thanking Tony and wishing him the very best in the future. I cannot think of any better job to prepare you for being a grandparent than being an usher in Leinster House and herding the bag of cats that is often the TDs in this place. We wish him all the very best.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

When it comes to housing, the seven threadbare pages of the programme for Government are the very definition of insanity. The Government uses the words "ambition" and "detailed". There is no ambition in these seven pages and there is certainly no detail. What we have got are vague, unclear and, at times, repetitive commitments that tell us one very simple thing, which is this Government will do exactly the same as the previous Government and the one before it with respect to housing. This means the crisis is going to get worse. This is not just my view. Look at the opinion poll in the Sunday Independentat the weekend, which found 52% of people do not believe the Government is even trying to tackle the housing crisis. A total of 82% of people said the Government will not fix the housing crisis. Even if the Government is not willing to listen to us, it should at least pay attention to the wider public.

Let us have a look at this document and see what is lacking. First of all, the targets are wrong. The targets are lower than what every independent body, including the Government's own appointed Housing Commission, is saying what is required. If we start at the top with the wrong targets, then everything below it will be inadequate. Not only are the global targets wrong but the social housing targets are too low. They are well below what the homeless service providers and others tell us we need. There are not even affordable housing targets. The previous Government had no annual affordable housing targets and nor does this one. Nor is there anything to address the fact the so-called affordable homes the Government is delivering, of which there are far too few, are not affordable. This means more of the same.

The most bizarre thing is that the title of the chapter on housing is "Accelerating Housing Supply", yet there is not a single proposal in these pages that will accelerate this supply. In fact, one of the weakest areas after the targets is the delivery. Nowhere does the Government actually explain how it will increase or accelerate the delivery of public housing through reform of procurement or improvement in the Department, or private housing through greater support for the SME sector. The only thing that is clear from this is the Government will continue pushing up house prices. It will do so by extending the controversial first home scheme to second-hand homes, which will mean an extra €90,000 to push up the price of houses, locking out ever more young couples and single people from ever owning their own home.

I know the Government has no interest in listening to, or engaging in, the very large volume of positive alternative proposals we put forward. We know the Government will not do this. What baffles me is that the previous Government appointed a Housing Commission, getting together the country's leading experts in public and private housing delivery who spent two and a half years producing a report of hundreds of pages, but it is not even referenced in the document. Not a single one of its key recommendations is in it. The previous Minister for housing did not even have the courtesy to meet the commission before he disbanded it and then the Government disposed of its work. No wonder members of the commission have publicly said how disappointed they are with this plan and how it will not deal with the crisis. The members of the commission are saying this document is disappointing and will not resolve the problems. Listen to them if you will not listen to us.

Going through the other areas, there is nothing new or serious for renters in terms of rights or protection. The Government has completely ignored the ten key recommendations of the homeless policy group, which were sent to it only two or three weeks before the programme was finalised. It sets out what will be needed to tackle the homelessness crisis. There is nothing new for people struggling with defective blocks in Mayo, Donegal, Clare and elsewhere. There is no indication of any urgency in tackling Celtic tiger-era defects. The funding promised two years ago for fire safety remediation works still has not been provided to a single scheme anywhere in the country. There is nothing new for those in social housing, flat complexes and estates who are in desperate need of urban regeneration and deep retrofit. They will continue to live in some of the poorest quality housing in the State, and this is owned and managed by the Government.

What we have seen in the Minister's remarks is that the gap between rhetoric and reality is growing ever greater. It has become a hallmark of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that it treats these debates with a level of dishonesty. Just as they were caught out claiming 40,000 new-build homes would be delivered last year, they are now repeating another untruth by saying 60,000 new homes were started on site last year when they were not. We will continue to hold the Government to account. We will continue to propose detailed radical realistic alternatives and, eventually, we will have a housing policy that tackles this crisis, but it is not in this programme for Government.

See this speech in context