Mark Ward (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein)

As we speak, there are 83 vacant homes in my area of South Dublin County Council, five of which have been empty for more than a year. Each one of those homes should have a family living in it. It is disgusting that adults are stuck living in their parents' back bedrooms while the house next door is boarded up.

Young people are boarding planes to Australia when they could be starting lives in these boarded-up homes. Children are walking past these boarded-up homes on the way back to hotel rooms they are sharing with their families. This is simply not good enough. Tonight Sinn Féin will bring forward a motion calling for urgent action to get these vacant homes back into stock and get families living in them. I am calling on everybody to support it.

It is also time we introduced a social housing passport. I have raised this numerous times, including with the Tánaiste previously. Many people have contacted me who started out in one local authority, had to move to a different local authority because of the housing crisis, have had children and integrated into that community and now have been told that if they would like to remain in that community in a council home, they will have to come off the list on which they started thereby losing all their time and starting again. This is a direct consequence of the housing crisis. Nobody should be waiting over 12 years for a home. A social housing passport would allow people to carry their time from one local authority to another. This is a very fair request.

Rents in my area are at an all-time high. People tell me that new rents in some of the new builds in Lucan come in at over €3,000 per month. I have never seen the likes of it. What does the Government do to resolve this? It looks after industrial landlords and the vulture funds by removing the sole protection renters had, which was rent caps. Instead the Government will link rents to inflation. The Minister of State can shake his head all he likes. It is going to link rents to inflation. One would need to be living under a rock not to realise what inflation has been like over the past number of years. The price of food, petrol, gas and electricity has gone through the roof and now the Government wants to do the same with rents. Shame on the Minister of State and shame on this Government. Once again, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have shown that they are firmly working hand in hand with industrial landlords.

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