Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour)

Daft.ie reports today that the asking price for a home is nearly 40% higher than pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, 5,145 children are in homelessness. Last Friday's figures again showed a new shameful record, with the creeping up of the numbers in homelessness and a new record being set every month. Every day, we all hear from people with good jobs, many of them couples with two incomes, who are giving up on trying to buy a home because they simply have no prospect of being able to get a mortgage or afford to buy a home. The Land Development Agency chairperson has estimated that as many as 70% of workers in Ireland are effectively priced out of the housing market, both for renting and for purchase.

In next week's budget, the Government must make a meaningful dent in the national response to the housing emergency. We must see a real plan to increase the supply of housing. Our concern is that the budget will simply set more fictitious goals, as fictitious as the numbers that Fianna Fáil gave us on housing delivery in the general election campaign last year. Can the Taoiseach assure us there will be a real plan in place to build more homes?

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