Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú)

Today marks another dark day for the Government's housing record. The original target for 2025 of 41,000 new builds has been binned. The Minister, Deputy Browne, has cut the official target by 20%, stating that possibly only 34,000 homes will be built this year. Last year, only 30,000 homes were built, again far short of the Government's target of 40,000. This Government is in reverse in terms of the biggest crisis happening in this country. The promise in the programme for Government is that 300,000 homes would be built. Right now, the Government is going to meet half of that figure, based on the number of houses currently being built.

I have submitted freedom of information, FOI, requests to every single local authority in the country, in order to understand the scale of the crisis. The data I have received through these FOI requests fully contradict the Government's information. We asked local authorities, first, the number of homeless people in the State. Their figure is that 16,472 people are currently homeless. When we asked the Government for the homeless figure, we were told there are 15,580 homeless people. The Government is currently understating the number of homeless people in the State by 892. The Government's ability to count the number of homeless people is out by nearly 1,000.

We also sent an FOI to every local authority in the country to find out how many people are on housing waiting lists. The councils told us that there are 75,000 people currently on housing waiting lists. The official Government figure is 58,824. Here again, the Government is undercounting and understating the number by 16,000. Its ability to count the number of people on housing waiting lists at the moment is out by the population of Tullamore. That is an incredible situation.

We also FOI'd local authorities on the number of local authority homes that are empty. In the jaws of the worst housing crisis in the history of the State, there are 3,779 council-owned homes empty. Having empty homes in the middle of a housing crisis is akin to exporting food in the middle of the Famine. It is wrong. The fact of the matter is that we are paying nearly €600 million to house people in RAS and HAP homes, while so many local authority homes are empty.

I mentioned the Government and competence previously in relation to this, but perhaps I am giving it too much credit. Is it the case that in the middle of a Government freefall in terms of housing, it is misleading the general public on the number of people who are on housing waiting lists and the number who are homeless? Can we trust a word out of the Government's mouth in terms of these figures?

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