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

Every week brings yet more news of Government failure, as the housing crisis further spirals out of the Government's control. This week, we saw daft.ie report that rents have risen by a staggering 43% since the pandemic. At the weekend, right on schedule, we were treated to the latest top-of-the-head idea from the Government. First it was tax breaks, then it was beds in sheds and, this time, the housing Minister made a rare appearance to say he wants to appoint a maverick person to kick-start delivery of homes, a sort of "fixer-in-chief". In 2021, when the Government launched Housing for All, the Taoiseach described it as forming the "basis for a long-term sustainable housing system for this and future generations". We all thought the Minister for housing would be the fixer-in-chief. Is this decision now to appoint an outsider to head up the Government's new strategic housing activation office an admission that the Government's policy has failed?

Fianna Fáil has held the housing brief for more than four years now. Those have been four years of failure, as acknowledged even by Government Departments. Department of Finance figures show that apartment planning permissions fell by one third in the first nine months of last year. The Department of public expenditure said this week that the Croí Cónaithe cities scheme was too small to ensure that apartment building could be viable. We are increasingly hearing from Fianna Fáil TDs the mantra that international finance will not invest in building apartments here unless they can get a higher rate of return. That is code for saying that renters will have to pay higher rents. That is what was so dishonest about Fianna Fáil's general election campaign on housing. Fianna Fáil misled us all on the figures for housing completions, continuously promising 40,000 new builds last year when the true figure was 10,000 less than that. Fianna Fáil did not make proposals for tax breaks for developers until after the election, and did not talk about rent increases or the growing crisis in apartment financing.

The truth is there are solutions which lie in a radical reset of housing policy, as the Housing Commission recommended. If the private sector and international capital are not engaged in financing the building of apartments, then the State must step in because only the State has the deep pockets necessary to underwrite the true level of risk and investment needed. The market has failed and ordinary workers and renters cannot bear the level of rents that speculators would want.

Apartments constitute vital strategic infrastructure, as well as vital homes for our communities. Alongside our plan to scale up the Land Development Agency, the Labour Party proposes several State-led solutions to the apartment financing crisis. Here is one. With €140 billion sitting on deposit in overnight and demand accounts in our banks, why are we not offering people a State-backed solidarity bond to finance housing? At the same time, the State is salting away €4 billion a year into the Future Ireland Fund. Will the Taoiseach consider deploying these funds, through the Housing Finance Agency, the strategic investment fund and other State funding vehicles, to deliver the homes and apartments that our communities so badly need?

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