Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)

Be clear that students and parents will not be fooled by the Government's spin, because they will feel it in their pockets. Budget 2026 should have abolished student fees for good. The Government should be on a pathway to that. That is what it should have done, but it chose not to. We provided for a cut of €1,500 on the pathway to that. That was the right thing to do.

Broken promise number five is that the Government will fix housing once and for all. How many times have we heard that pledge? The Government has caused record rents that keep going up and up. House prices are far beyond the reach of hard-working people. Homelessness is at a level we thought we would never see. More than 5,000 children went to sleep last night in emergency accommodation with nowhere to call home. It is shameful. In the election campaign last year, the Government deliberately misled the public about housing delivery figures and since then its own officials have rung the alarm bell about missing its housing targets every year up to 2030, and yet the Taoiseach actually stood up and spoke today about building on our successes under Housing for All. Mother of God, spare us.

He has repeatedly claimed we are turning the corner on housing, but the fact is the Government is going backwards. It does not have the ambition or determination. It actually does not have the ideas necessary to deliver the affordable homes people need. Instead of real action, what we get are half-baked gimmicks, like its infamous housing tsar carry-on.

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