John Cummins (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Acting Chairperson. I welcome the Minister of State. Listening to the Sinn Féin representatives deliver their prepared speeches, one could forgive them for leaving out the fact that many of the things which are undoubtedly working and which were put in place by the Government have been shamelessly opposed by their party. Last year, 32,700 homes were delivered in this country. When Fine Gael entered office in 2011 - and that has been cited many times - we were building fewer than 7,000 homes. In 2013, we built fewer than 5,000 homes.We cannot just click our fingers and say we are going to magic houses out of thin air. When there is a collapse of the construction sector and a whole industry is wiped out, it takes time to build it back up and put the foundations in place in order to build houses, which we are now seeing come to fruition. The 500 first-time buyers every single week who were mentioned on this side of the House were just dismissed as if they are not real people buying homes. Solutions, many of them through the support of Government schemes that have been put in place, are being provided to people. More than 46,000 people have availed of the help to buy scheme since it was introduced. This puts €30,000 worth of tax back in people's pockets to enable them to get their deposit together in order to buy or build their first home. Of course, Sinn Féin will not say that if it were to abolish overnight the help to buy scheme, as it proposes, what that will result in is fewer homes being built. As sure as night follows day, if there are fewer people with deposits to buy homes, fewer houses will be built by the construction sector. The abolition of the first home scheme is a plank of Sinn Féin's policy. This scheme has provided more than 4,000 approvals and some 1,600 drawdowns to bridge that gap between the maximum mortgage and the cost of the home. It provides solutions for people to be able to get on the property ladder who could not do so without this scheme. Sinn Féin wants to take the rug out from underneath these people and put nothing in its place. Sinn Féin will not admit that if we did not introduce the development levy waiver and the refund of Irish Water connection charges last year, we would not have the record commencement data this country has seen over the past 12 months. Construction has begun on 30,000 homes in the first four months of this year. Let us put that in context. Some 32,000 homes were commenced in all of 2023, so the measure has worked. Sinn Féin will still not admit that it was wrong in not supporting the measure. The vacant property refurbishment grant puts up to €70,000 in the pockets of people to allow them to take a derelict property and turn it into their home. Again, this was opposed by Sinn Féin.

Mention was made of renters. Soundbites like, "We will freeze rents" sound absolutely fantastic in theory but what happens in practice? The left-wing Berlin Government introduced it to much fanfare. It said it would freeze rents for three years. What happened? Twelve months later, it was struck down by the German constitutional court. There was a 50% reduction in available rental properties in Berlin. Who in their right mind thinks a reduction of 50% of rental stock in Ireland would be a good thing at this moment in time? Somehow Sinn Féin thinks that Ireland is different from Germany. A soundbite we will not hear from Sinn Féin is that when it published its housing document in December 2015, it said it would build 36,500 social and affordable homes from 2016 to 2021. The previous Government and this one delivered 51,076 social homes in that period, yet Sinn Féin decries us for what we have done in trying to increase the social housing stock. It is far more than Sinn Féin even promised. I would not be surprised if that housing document disappears from the Sinn Féin website after I have mentioned it here.

Sinn Féin will also not mention how it will deliver houses for €250,000 across the country or houses for €300,000 in Dublin. The Sinn Féin party leader said this to much fanfare before Christmas but there has not been a shred of detail since. Sinn Féin will not tell us about the terms and conditions it is looking to apply to its version of an affordable purchase scheme, in which people will never be able to own the property they pay a mortgage on and they will not be able to pass it on to a niece, nephew or grandchild because they might be over the arbitrary income cap that Sinn Féin is going to put in place.

Many of the measures are working and Sinn Féin needs to come clean and be honest with people on what it is saying. Simplistic solutions and soundbites are being found out by the public every single week. That is why support for Sinn Féin is plummeting. Be honest with people on what can be delivered. Do not just pretend that with a click of a finger everything can be sorted in the morning. We need honest politics and honest debate on this issue because it is the most important one of my generation.