Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming into the House. I know he is a very busy man. It is good to be busy, and I am busy, but it is not good to be busy if nothing is getting done. I am not saying the Minister is doing nothing. Far from it. I know how hard he is working, but I have concerns.

Housing is the key issue facing this Government. It is not about personalities. It is about real political priorities on which the Government has failed. Homelessness has reached unprecedented levels, surging rents are at historic heights, home building numbers are tens of thousands behind where they should be and some 85,000 people are on the social housing waiting list. All the while, ordinary workers cannot afford a place to own.

Fianna Fáil is using the confidence and supply agreement to press for a policy shift to establish an affordable housing scheme, increase social housing spending and strengthen the rental sector. The Government has to start delivering on housing. After four separate plans and over a dozen launches, we need to see bricks and mortar in the ground.

We have the four pillars in Rebuilding Ireland. However, the flagging Rebuilding Ireland plan is behind target already. Supply and affordability is the key issue that must be addressed to get to grips with the crisis in the private, social and rental sector.

I welcome the news this morning about the new national regeneration and development agency, NRDA, being given the powers to buy State and semi-State lands for development for housing but I urge that there would not be a repeat of over the odds payment for those sites. Nobody needs to get rich from that. We just need housing.

When the Minister outlined his expectations last week for the delivery of social housing to local authorities, with targets of almost 5,000 units including 249 in Cork city, 115 in Carlow, 165 in Waterford and 153 in Limerick - those are the few I want to mention - there was no timescale or sense of what might happen if those targets were not met or an indication of when they would be met. I need clarification on that because it reminded me of Groundhog Day. Last year, when the Minister was in Carlow, he turned the sod on the sites he announced the other day. He had already gone to those sites. What we have is the 115 houses in Carlow, which I welcome-----