Ruairí Ó Murchú (Louth, Sinn Fein)

We are back here with the single transferable speech we can all take out. To a degree, at this stage I am boring myself. The problem is this issue is still impacting detrimentally on the people coming into all of our constituency offices and, I have no doubt, into the Minister of State's as well. We see from the new Daft.ie report that the average price for a new build in County Louth is €385,000, and the average across the board is €321,911, an increase of 14.6%. I am told, if we go back pre-Covid, that it is an increase of 51.6%. That is huge and that is phenomenal. All that Government spoke about is how it is on the side of homeownership and all the rest of it. There is no sign of delivery in that regard. We all know that we do not have to go through rent prices for any constituency. We have all put them out here and gone through Daft.ie and all the other websites. We have also dealt with our constituents who can us tell us to forget the price as they cannot actually get a rental property in any way, shape or form. The problem is that we keep coming in here and having these debates. We talk about the whole issue of high rents, high house prices and the lack of affordable housing. However, nothing that has been presented by Government is anywhere close to a solution. I welcome what the Minister of State said about the idea that we would have delivery for those people looking for cabin-type scenarios in their back gardens and whatever else. We know that is a small cohort, but we even need to see detail and speed on delivery of that. We really and truly are not seeing that delivery across the board. We all know the issues with homelessness. We know when we are dealing with local authorities that they are under far more pressure than previously and solutions that were available to them are no longer available. That even relates to what capacity was in the market. At this point we know that tenant in situ has been cut to bits. It was one of the few solutions there that was in operation.

I brought this issue up multiple times last week and I will put it back on the table. With regard to disability housing, I have been contacted, as I am sure have many others, by the likes of St. John of God's about its approved housing body, which had, let us say, three properties between counties Louth and Meath, which it was about to purchase under the capital assistance scheme. Now, they cannot because that scheme's funding has been put into the same block as tenant in situ and so on, and local authorities are saying they do not have the money and cannot do what they did previously. We are talking about a lot of residents with disabilities and challenges but what is the solution? Are we going to put them back into congregated settings? The whole idea was delivering de-congregated settings. Once again, not only was the tenant in situ solution removed, but the Government has also created a huge issue with disability housing. I expect that to be addressed, whatever about these other issues and the constant failings we are dealing with.

See this speech in context