Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)

I welcome young Olivia Nevin who is in the Gallery with her family. She is up from Cork for a birthday visit to Leinster House.

The number of children in homelessness is hurtling towards the 5,000 mark. This would represent a truly shameful new record. The tenant in situ scheme can no longer keep families in their homes because the Department of housing has starved it of cash. Dublin City Council and Fingal County Council have stopped operating it altogether. Vacancy and dereliction blight our communities, a grim visual symbol of the housing crisis. As we approach the Dáil recess, the Government’s end-of-term report on housing is a clear fail. The Taoiseach said it would ramp up to deliver 60,000 new homes per year and continue the tenant in situ scheme. He said the Government would update compulsory purchase laws to tackle dereliction and promised to protect renters from abusive practices and soaring rents but there is no sign of effective action on any of this. Fianna Fáil is the largest party in government. It holds the housing Ministry and the office of An Taoiseach, so it holds all the cards. Where is the change the Taoiseach committed to delivering? So far, his big ideas have amounted to him or the Minister for housing licking their fingers and sticking them in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. There is no evidence base for Government policies. Instead, we have seen texts to journalists, press releases issued and worrying about the consequences later, along with the ill-fated notion of a housing tsar and tax breaks for the same developers who conspired with the Taoiseach's party years ago to create this housing mess. The announcement on rent pressure laws actually necessitated emergency legislation to avoid a flood of evictions.

The Government's policies range from bewildering to certifiable. I will give an example. The Government claim to have passed a once-in-a-generation planning Act mere months ago but in our last sitting week before the recess, we are asked to amend that Act by the Minister for emergency legislation, as he might as well be called, before most of the big planning Act has even been commenced. It wants to reduce apartment sizes and remove the minimum 5% for community and cultural space. It denies this is being done at the behest of big developers. The Taoiseach has insisted that the change will reduce the cost of an apartment by between €50,000 and €100,000 but we have seen no evidence for this claim, just an internal summary of Land Development Agency research. At the housing committee, the Minister told my colleague, Deputy Sheehan, that the research would be published but he would not say when and the Bill is being rammed through the Dáil and Seanad this week. Yesterday, Deputy Sheehan asked the Taoiseach for the evidence there would be a reduction in the cost of apartments as a result of this change. The Taoiseach did not answer him either. We are not surprised there is no apparent evidence from Fianna Fáil because it has form on giving us dodgy, non-evidence-based policies like the overstatement of the number of homes built last year by nearly 10,000 units. I will ask the question again. Where is the evidence that reducing apartment sizes will make any substantial reduction in apartment prices for hard-pressed people who simply want a home of their own?

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