Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I return to the biggest immediate challenge facing the Government, namely housing. Despite the bluster from Government, it has admitted that last year it built nearly 10,000 fewer homes than it previously stated. We all hear from our constituents in communities around the country that housing is the single biggest issue facing families and individuals. We hear this from people who are homeless, from families who are living in housing insecurity and from people who cannot move out of their childhood bedrooms because they cannot find affordable homes anywhere in their neighbourhoods.

Tomorrow morning, the House will debate a Labour Party motion which sets out both a clear pathway for the radical actions necessary to address this housing catastrophe and our proposals for active State intervention to address this matter and ramp up delivery. We are offering a radical reset of housing policy, as the Housing Commission has called for. However, the Minister and his Cabinet colleagues have agreed a countermotion which will reject our ambitious proposals for change and which instead, it seems, will offer only more of the same - more of what has not worked to deliver homes for people.

The only suggestion of change is from the Taoiseach, namely to weaken protections for renters and provide more money to developers, with no active role for the State. Can the Minister explain why the Government is so set on repeating the mistakes of the past? Why is it intent on repeating the same mistakes which led to missed targets and lack of delivery under for Housing for All and which created the conditions that led to the last property crash under the watch of the Minister's party?

We are all clear that the Minister's party and Fine Gael misled the public on housing delivery in the general election. It is only 12 weeks since we were in the thick of that campaign. In the pitches to the public from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, there were claims that construction would exceed targets and that 40,000 homes would be built. There was nothing about ending RPZs or about prioritising tax breaks for developers. Fine Gael even committed to retaining RPZs. In its manifesto, the Minister's party committed only to continuing to review them.

On the same page Fianna Fáil boasted about capping rents using RPZ legislation. There is no indication that it will be pulling the rug from underneath renters and removing the safety net that is there.

The Taoiseach has warned Government TDs to brace themselves for a raft of unpopular decisions on housing, but renters, who we have all heard from every day since the Taoiseach's pronouncement on Sunday, are bracing themselves and facing the fear that their monthly bills will further skyrocket. In his new role in public expenditure, the Minister must be concerned about the Taoiseach's threatened transfer of public money from investment in necessary State infrastructure and beefing up the Land Development Agency to instead delivering off-the-cuff handouts to developers. Handouts to developers did not work in the past; they made matters worse.

Can the Minister confirm that the RPZ laws will be renewed this year? What evidence does he have that tax breaks will lead to any increase in housing supply?

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