Louis O'Hara (Galway East, Sinn Fein)

Week in and week out, I have people in my clinics who are distraught because they cannot afford the cost of rent. A woman had to leave her home due to domestic violence and found herself and five kids moving in with elderly parents. A couple have to leave their home in two weeks' time and do not know where they will leave their personal belongings or their pets or whether they will be able to access emergency accommodation. There are countless families with children growing up in hotel rooms.

The average rent in County Galway is almost €1,700. It is more than €2,300 in the city. The Minister thinks this is not enough. He wants to hollow out rent pressure zones and allow rents for new tenancies to be set at extraordinary levels. Where is this going to end? Will it be when rents reach €3,000 per month? Will it be when almost all of our young people have left the country? What will it take for the Government to abandon its failed policies?

How are people supposed to afford these rents? How is it sustainable to continue to push them up even further? This is why people are protesting outside the building tonight; it is because the Government is denying them a future. It has normalised homelessness and it wants to squeeze every last cent it can out of hard-pressed renters. Not one affordable home has been delivered in my constituency. According to the Minister, the houses there are already affordable. We have had pitiful investment in housing infrastructure. The Government has gutted the tenant in situ scheme. There are dozens of empty homes in every town and village throughout east Galway that have been lying idle for years. These are all hallmarks of the Government's approach to housing. The solutions are staring it in the face but it chooses to ignore them. It is time for the Minister to wake up, stop making this crisis worse, stop increasing rents and start investing in infrastructure and affordable housing.

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