Mary Fitzpatrick (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Happy Lá Fhéile Bríde to everyone. Ba mhaith liom buíochas a ghabháil le Seanadóir O'Loughlin.

Today, I am thinking of everybody who is struggling with the enormous challenge of trying either to buy or rent a home. It is very frustrating and stressful for people. Last week we had the publication of the second quarterly report on Housing for All, the Government's €20 billion plan to deliver more than 330,000 affordable, social and private homes both to purchase and rent over the next decade. It is a massively important plan. Despite Covid-19 last year, the shutdown of construction and the fact that we are emerging from a decade of undersupply, there is good news from the second quarterly report and there is hope for people who are genuinely struggling at present to either buy or rent their own home. Of the 231 actions in the plan, 123 have commenced or have been completed. It is important to recognise that last year, despite the shutdown, more than 20,000 homes were completed. There were more than 39,000 planning applications and more than 30,000 commencements. That all helps on the supply side.

On the affordability side, this House and the Dáil passed the Affordable Housing Act 2021, which is significant and game-changing legislation to address affordability. There is real hope there and it is very important that Members of both Houses use the legislation we have passed and use all the resources available to the State to deliver increased housing supply and affordability. Some people are engaging in a vile level of hypocrisy on this subject.I urge them to stop doing so and to be constructive. They should think of all the people who genuinely have a housing need and require help and for whom it is not a political debate. They should support the State to actually deliver for those people.