Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein)

Éireoidh teipeanna tithíochta an Rialtais níos measa mar níl sé in ann infreastruchtúr bunúsach a phleanáil agus a bhainistiú i gceart. Tá fadhbanna ann inár ngréasán uisce agus leictreachais ag cur moill ar na mílte tithe agus á gcur i mbaol.

For years we have listened to the Tánaiste and the Taoiseach, Deputy Micheál Martin, say that housing is their number one priority yet every single day we get headlines about Government's failures and incompetence which is putting the delivery of thousands of homes at risk. Let us take this week alone. First, we had the Central Bank and the ESRI telling the Oireachtas housing committee that the Government will not meet its housing targets this year or next year and that without a major policy change, it will not meet its targets out to 2030. Roll on to Tuesday and on RTÉ's "Prime Time", the Irish Council for Social Housing and the State's largest approved housing body, AHB, Clúid, confirmed that thousands of much-needed social and affordable housing projects have been delayed because of Government red tape and bureaucracy. They say this means that 3,000 fewer social and affordable homes will be delivered. For months, the Minister, Deputy James Browne, denied that this was a problem but he has now been found out. If all that was not enough, we come to today and two senior civil servants have sounded the alarm over serious infrastructure deficits impacting disastrously on housing delivery. First, the chief executive of Uisce Éireann has told the housing Minister that all households in Dublin face water shortages in the next five years. This is due to significant delays in delivering major water supply projects in the capital and the Government's failure to invest properly in our creaking water network. The inability to guarantee a water connection is jeopardising the delivery of thousands of new homes. Then we had the Secretary General of the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications issuing another stark warning that housing delivery is at risk because of electricity supply shortages. Data centres are soaking up electricity put in place for future housing and this problem goes right back to the failure of the Government to build capacity in the grid and to modernise the network to meet the challenges of today.

What we are talking about here, in simple terms, is the inability of the Government to ensure the very basics - water and electricity connections for houses. These are some of the most basic needs in any society and people are scratching their heads because this State has record surpluses. Money is not the problem so the problem must be the incompetence and bad decisions made over and over again by the Government. This is a Government that cannot plan or get the job done when it comes to critical infrastructure and this is strangling housing delivery.

For the life of me I cannot fathom how the Government can say - and I am sure the Tánaiste will say it again with a straight face - that it has turned a corner on housing. The truth is that it is going around in circles. All Government members are going around in circles on this issue. Their failure to get the basic rights, to future proof infrastructure development is coming home to roost and it is impacting hardest on housing delivery.

A few weeks ago the Tánaiste made a TikTok video. In it he said that we have a housing emergency and that he wanted the Government to start acting like it. That raised some eyebrows. He has been a Minister for 11 years and his party has been in government for 14 years and yet he is doing TikTok videos saying that the Government should act like there is a housing emergency. It has been put on the record over and over again. Uisce Éireann, the Secretary General of the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications, and the largest AHB are all telling us of the Government's failure to plan and the fact that the Department of housing is stalling and has now put at risk thousands of social and affordable houses.

Does the Tánaiste accept what the Central Bank and ESRI have said, that the Government is going to miss its targets for housing this year? If so, what is the Government really going to deliver this year? Does the Tánaiste accept that 3,000 fewer social and affordable homes will be delivered because of delays in the Department of housing? What is the Government going to do about the water and electricity supply that is so vitally needed?

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