Results 281-300 of 51,889 for speaker:Micheál Martin

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: The Deputy would be very first guy condemning us if we did not.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: There are homeless prevention measures, tenancy sustainment measures and so on, and enabling people to exit emergency accommodation as quickly as possible. We will fund over 5,000 new homes under the social housing current expenditure programme. We continue to support over 40,000 existing homes under the scheme. There is €470 million to support an additional 7,000 new tenancies. At...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: That is not a soundbite or rhetoric. That is unprecedented investment in housing and that is reflected this year as well.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: First of all, I would reject completely the analysis of the Deputy. We have been listening to a lot of empty rhetoric on the side of the Opposition in respect of housing. As I said earlier, housing supply is not where we want it to be but it is significantly way up on where it was five years ago on an annual basis. In the second quarter of this year, there were very high figures - the...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: Of course we did not wait for the housing action plan. We have brought in a range of measures since the beginning of the year, most of which the Deputy has opposed, as she opposed most measures in respect of housing from the planning Act right through. This budget allocates significantly more resources again on very substantial State investment in housing - a 20% increase in overall...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: It is the State is investing across abroad sweep of housing policies. What has to happen is that the State funding has to be balanced by private sector finance. I know the Deputy hates that. The Deputy has an instinctive ideological opposition to that, which I disagree with. Until we get a significant financial investment from the private sector in housing, we are not going to get to 50,000.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: The State cannot sustainably finance on its own the building of 50,000 to 60,000 houses for the next decade, so strategy and policy must reflect the continuance of unprecedented Government investment but complemented and supplemented by private sector investment. That is the clear strategic approach of Government. It is not panic mode or anything of the sort but it is relentless and it is...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: That is the bottom line. There is this refusal to acknowledge progress but we need to do much more than that. That is why the Government is doing everything it possibly can to get more houses built, get more apartments built -----

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: ----- both on the social housing level, affordable housing and generally across the situation and we will continue to do that.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: We brought in the rent credit, which is quite significant in itself and has been in terms of its impact.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: I have. The Deputy has asked a range of questions, to be fair. On the homelessness question, the Minister is taking a different approach to the eviction ban because we believe the eviction ban will damage supply but what we can do in terms of homeless is have a very specific programme and an allocated resource. The Minister received €50 million earlier this year in respect of taking...

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: The Minister is committed to doing that and he received additional resources in the budget to double down on that and to have a particularly focused programme in respect of children in homelessness. As the Deputy knows, people enter and exit homelessness on an ongoing basis.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: The issue for us is to get families and children out of homelessness as quickly as possible. It is much more complex than has been articulated by the Deputy and others in this House.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: Homelessness is much more complex today, and the Deputy knows that.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: That is why there will also be legislative changes to some aspects of what is going on as well

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: No, the ESRI used a different methodology from the one we used last week in terms of how we utilised the-----

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: This is well known.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: The Deputy is clearly not listening. She interrupts all the time, as do her colleagues.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: I always remember the Deputy's intervention during the energy crisis. It was the Liz Truss intervention.

Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions (14 Oct 2025)

Micheál Martin: Sinn Féin copied and pasted the Liz Truss intervention but thanks be to God we did not accept its proposals-----