Maurice Quinlivan (Limerick City, Sinn Fein)

There is a housing emergency in this State. Whatever way the Government tries to spin it, that is what we have. Whether someone is a house buyer, renter or waiting on the council to provide a house, he or she will find they face a challenging and often very long course. Limerick has seen rents increase by an astonishing 75% since 2020 and house purchase prices have increased by 44% since 2019. Many people have been on council housing waiting lists in excess of seven years. Indeed, the average house price now stands at €325,000. That figure has been increasing in the last three months, so prices continue to spiral.

The Government housing plan is failing. Last year in Limerick, 1,000 dwellings were built, which is 3,300 short of what the Housing Commission believed was needed for the county. There is a litany of reasons delivery is slow and prices continue to spiral. We have a housing plan that is not fit for purpose and we have had successive governments underfunding the critical infrastructure needed for housing delivery. The Irish Home Builders Association has warned repeatedly that drinking water and wastewater capacity are a constraint on housing delivery. We have had Uisce Éireann warning there is a need for a significant increase in capital funding in order to keep pace with the Government's revised housing targets. That has not been done. We have a Government that ignores its own Housing Commission's recommendations. It recommended a housing delivery oversight executive with executive powers underpinned by legislation. This was ignored, and instead we were presented with a proposal for the position of a housing tsar on an outrageous salary of €100,000 more than the average house in Limerick for a job the Minister should be doing himself.

In 2024, Limerick was allocated money to buy houses for tenants in situ, which was one of the good things the Government did when it got rid of the no-fault eviction ban. We told it people would be entering emergency accommodation and become homeless. Of 107 people we were supposed to be buying houses for, 24 will be bought from money from last year and there is no money from this year. As for the rest of the 107 people, I will ask the Minister of State a question I asked at the time the Government got rid of the no-fault eviction ban. Where are those people supposed to go? The Government is making them homeless.

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