Rory Hearne (Dublin North-West, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

I wish the Minister the best of luck. She has a hard job ahead of her, as the entire Government does. Unfortunately, I have to raise again the issue of the 40,000 homes that were not built last year. The truth is that this Government was elected on a false claim, that it had turned the corner on housing and that it was fixing the housing crisis. The question is why it ignored the truth that was presented by independent experts, the State agencies that the entire administration of our State relies on to make decisions, namely, the Central Bank, the State research agency - the ESRI, and the Central Statistics Office. Why were the figures of a German bank and Cairn Homes, one of the biggest developers in this country, the figures that were used to claim how many houses were being built instead of those of the independent and State agencies? It is important to say that the Central Bank stated in the third quarter of 2024 that there would be only 32,000 homes completed in 2024. The ESRI quarterly commentary in September 2024 stated there was a worrying development in terms of the declining investment in dwellings given the residential housing deficit, while of course the CSO data that was out in October also showed apartments down 7% and single dwellings down 5%. Instead of putting out and relying on the real data and the real evidence, the Government provided these figures that were unreliable and based on figures by vested interests. The Government's housing plans were not working and it tried to cover up the truth about its own housing policy failure. It tried to hoodwink the Irish people and the Dáil itself. It misled us and the people regarding the housing policy and figures.

I call on this House to have questions and answers with the Ministers who made statements to this Dáil that 40,000 homes were being built last year and to provide the evidence of the basis of those statements. This is vital and we are not letting it go because it is about fairy tales about how many homes are actually being built. The reality and the fundamental problem is that the programme for Government is based on that falsehood of how many homes were going to be built. It continues the same policies that failed to deliver the 40,000 homes that were needed. Why are we not seeing a major policy shift? The Government's housing policy did not work. It did not deliver the 40,000 homes about which it misled the public and misled the Dáil.

Policy has not been about affordable housing. This is the fundamental problem at the heart of the continued housing policies of the programme for Government that are about subsidising the market, developers and institutional funds. The Taoiseach spoke about there being record State intervention. Yes, there is State invention but it is subsidising those who are profiting from the housing crisis rather than actually building affordable housing. What we need is a new plan that builds genuinely affordable housing through the State and through not-for-profit housing bodies such as the Ó Cualann housing body which is trying to deliver homes in Ballymun but is being blocked by our State. Yesterday, the Taoiseach spoke about ideology and fundamentalism. There is a market fundamentalism on the part of the Government that needs to change.

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