Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Independent) | Oireachtas source

The Government's response and amendment, while not unexpected, are nonetheless hugely disappointing, and even shocking, because there is absolutely no acceptance of the depth and breadth of what is an intolerable housing emergency. This emergency started with the privatisation of the local authority house building programme by a Fianna Fáil Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, back in the early 2000s. Many of us warned then that would be the start of a huge housing crisis down the road. We were not listened to, of course, and here we find ourselves now in what is accepted by the vast majority of people in this House, on both Government and Opposition benches, to be an absolute emergency that requires emergency action.

There is no acceptance by the Government of missed housing targets; there is no acceptance of the emergency actions recommended by the Housing Commission; there is no acceptance of the need to implement the Kenny report on the price of building land; there is no acceptance that rents are too high and have to be frozen; and there is no acceptance that evictions need to be banned.

In fact, this is a Government that is in denial. That denial has consequences for ordinary families right across this country. What they mean is continued huge levels of homelessness, exorbitant rents, no security of tenure, skyrocketing house prices, 500,000 young people living in their childhood bedrooms and a huge cohort of families, which everybody in this House knows, completely locked out of the housing market. They will never be able to buy a house of their own. They are not on the housing list and they are not able to purchase a house by way of a mortgage.

The housing emergency is undermining the very fabric of Irish society and it must be addressed urgently by emergency action.

That emergency action is available, it is provided for in the Constitution and there is precedent for it.

I ask every TD in the House, both in opposition and in government, to vote in support of this emergency motion. In particular, I ask Government backbenchers, who know about this because they are contacted daily by families in intolerable situations and facing homelessness, to set aside the party whip on this occasion in the national interest and in the interest of families who are homeless. There are 15,700 people homeless, of whom 4,603 are children. I ask Government backbenchers to set aside the party whip on this issue in the national interest and vote in favour of this emergency motion on housing. Everybody knows that the housing situation cannot be turned around by the policies this Government is continuing to pursue. These policies have failed utterly over the years. I refer not just to this Government or that which preceded it but also to those way back to the early 2000s, when this housing emergency was set in train by the Taoiseach of the day, Bertie Ahern.

I commend the motion to the House and ask every TD in government and in opposition to vote in favour of it.

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