Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I rise today again after a significant adjournment of this House. I would like to raise again the escalating housing and rental problem in the country. This is an issue I have raised over a dozen times in this House and it seems to be getting worse by the day. The sector has been described by some as in extreme distress. With reports from Daft.ie and the PRTB showing a steady climb in the cost of rent, and with the desperate circumstances in which young people are not able to save as fast as house prices are increasing, we really are in a crisis scenario. Rents rose by 13.4% this year up to March. The average rent in south Dublin is €1,855 per month, with home ownership at its lowest level since 1971. With only 3,000 properties to rent this month, we will see an increase in the short term.

Statistics showed last week that there are 20,000 people with finance chasing 10,000 available homes for sale. This will only lead to another property bubble and inflated house prices. At the same time, the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government is concentrating his efforts on winning the hearts and minds of his supporters in a leadership race instead of actually implementing any meaningful measures that might go some way towards alleviating a crisis and encouraging supply.Previously in this House, I discussed measures including VAT holidays, reduction in development charges and levies, streamlined certification for building regulations and lending initiatives that might support or encourage builders to enter the market and tackle the elephant in the room, namely, the supply of affordable housing in our country, mainly in our cities. Some of these cost barriers are the reasons it costs much more to build a two-bedroom apartment in our country than anywhere else in Europe. I ask the Leader to ask his colleague, the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community an Local Government, to put his leadership ambitions aside and to concentrate on the housing crisis and, to start with, implement some of these small measures which will go a long way to tackling the housing crisis.

On the news this morning reference was made to hospital waiting lists hitting an all-time record high. There are nearly 666,000 people on public hospital waiting lists, a new record. Over 7,000 people have languished on these lists for over a year. One of the major issues is that we export and import the highest proportion of nurses per capitathan any country in the world. We need to look at staffing in our hospitals and how we ensure that we retain our nurses and ensure we have a proper health system in this country so that people are not waiting on lists for this long. The Government is spending €50 million on initiatives in the form of the National Treatment Purchase Fund but it does not seem to have made any impact to date. I ask the Minister for Health to address this issue because it is not right. A lot of these lists are hidden lists in regard to waiting to get an appointment. This is a very serious issue and I ask the Minister to come to the House to address it.