Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)

People will gather to send a strong message to the Government. It is time for a radical reset of housing policy. No more incoherent policy changes. We need to see the radical reset the Housing Commission has called for because only the State has the deep pockets necessary to underwrite the construction of homes at the scale that is needed. The Government must scale up its effort and ambition, not waste time and money on "Bertienomics" era tax breaks for developers or ineffectual apartment design changes.

One promising policy that we welcome is an overhaul of the Land Development Agency, LDA. We have been calling for this for years in Labour. We want to see the LDA become effective. Rather than trying to catch the Opposition off guard or trying to govern by gotcha, why will the Government not take on board other urgent and ambitious proposals for reform and fix the housing crisis? Why will it not adopt our policy on protections for renters?

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