Deputy Mary Lou McDonald- speech from 8 Nov 2022

Minister, speaking on Morning Ireland on Thursday last, you conceded that Government won't meet its housing targets for this year. You said, let me quote you, in relation to direct social housing, building the target is 9,000. We don't believe at this juncture that 9,000 will be met. I take it that you stand over that comment. Your remarks at least shed some reality in contrast to the assertions made by the Taoiseach and the Housing Minister that Government is on track and that your housing policies are working. Despite the Taoiseach's repeated refrain that housing is the single biggest social issue facing Government, what we see is failure to plan and failure to deliver. You promised 9,000 social homes this year by the end of June. You had delivered only 1,765. You promised 4,100 affordable homes this year. You have delivered only 925 to date. This means Government will miss its social and affordable housing targets for the third year in a row. Targets, by the way, that don't even come close to meeting the level of housing need in our society. You also refused to introduce a ban on rent increases, rents that are crippling tenants, rents that are at record levels and continue to rise. Meanwhile, homelessness is at a historic high. Even with the ban on evictions, it is likely to rise. Child homelessness has increased by a staggering 51% since April 2021. So, it beggars belief that any member of Government could claim that your housing policies are working. Minister, do you accept that not alone are you missing your targets, but that in fact your entire approach to housing has failed? To make matters worse, we hear that Government is 2 billion euros behind in your annual housing spending and your capital spend. Now, that is not likely to change in the next six weeks. Two billion euros sitting there while people watch housing prices go through the roof and know that they have no chance of affording their own home. While young mothers and fathers and their children squeeze into the box rooms of their own parents' homes. While families languish for years and years on council housing waiting lists. People caught up in this never-ending housing crisis will be shocked by this Minister and angered. It highlights again that the Government is incapable of bringing the required urgency to deliver the homes that are needed. And now we see young people vote with their feet when it comes to housing. Right across Ireland, young people leaving because they cannot put a secure affordable roof over their heads. So, it is now time to deliver. So, it is now time to deliver. Thank you. I will not to fill out the roof over the roof of the roof. So, it has to be a better this way to support our sustainability and goals. So, it is time to deliver. So, it is time to deliver. But the difference between the people, it is time to be able to build deep. All the people, we talked to and we have a better way to do that. But it is time to distribute that life. We have a couple of things. We will not be able to deal with this. It is time to deliver. But not to flee and rest. So, today we are going to be able to do business. I will not be able to do that. How is it now to do that? It is time to think of that. expenditure, you hold the purse strings. How is sitting on €2 billion for housing, how is that happening when so many people are in desperate and unprecedented housing needs? How can government claim that it is doing everything it can to end the housing crisis while sitting on this huge sum of money, failure to plan, failure to deliver and administer you by your own acceptance and admissions meeting what are at best low-level targets? Fail, fail, fail. Thank you Deputy. This Government has acknowledged from the very beginning the scale of the challenge that we face as a country in terms of housing and the provision of accommodation for our people, whether it be private housing, public housing, cost rental, affordable purchase. We have prioritised investment in housing since coming into office in the summer of 2020, and that is delivering results. Do we believe that more needs to be done? Absolutely. The challenge is still immense, but it is a challenge that we will meet. The overall target by way of housing output of all forms in the current year is 24,600 in the Housing for All strategy. We are confident that that number will be significantly exceeded. That will be the highest number of new homes built for a very long time in our country. You raised specifically the issue of social housing. The target in the Housing for All plan by way of total additions to the social housing stock in the current year is 10,500. Principally that is made up of new bills. The point that I made in answering a question directly, which I always seek to do, is that we currently estimate we will build about 8,000 new homes, but that will be supplemented by purchases of new homes, by leases of new homes. That will, in our view, bring us close, if not in a position to reach the overall target of 10,500 of social housing additions to the stock in 2022, which is the highest number in this country for a long number of years. We are tackling the housing challenge using all of the levers at our disposal by, as a government, partnering with local authorities and the approved housing bodies, getting back to delivering public housing at scale for the first time in a generation. That is the right thing to do, and your deputies are welcoming new developments as they are being opened all over the country, and they are very welcome to do so, and to turn up to the launches of the Housing for All schemes all over Ireland, because thousands of people are being provided with accommodation in our country as a result of the investment that we are making. In addition, Deputy, we are investing in affordable housing for the first time in well over a decade as a country. New affordable purchase schemes, which you opposed. We have the Land Development Agency, which is now on-site, is delivering homes for our people, both public housing and cost rental homes as well, and again, you opposed the establishment of the Land Development Agency. We also have the Help to Buy scheme, which is there to support first-time buyers who are struggling in many instances, we acknowledge, to bridge that gap between the amount that they can borrow and the cost of purchasing a new home in Ireland today. There were close to 28,000 new homes built in our country in the 12 months to September of 2022. There were nearly 21,000 house completions alone in the first nine months of this year. This is already exceeding the total for 2021, which was about 20 and a half thousand, and we are projected to reach over 26,000 new homes by the end of the year. We acknowledge that there is much work yet to be done, but we are working very closely with the local authorities, with the approved housing bodies, to deliver new homes across the country. And we also need the private sector to continue to deliver homes for our people. We will see part five affordable homes come and stream again for the first time in a long time because of the change in the law that Minister O'Brien brought in. So it is challenging for many people to purchase a home. There are many who are caught in that rental trap. The central bank has made a certain change in terms of the macroprudential rules that will assist people in that regard as well. But I want to assure the Irish people that tackling the housing challenge is a top priority for this government. We are providing the investment. It is delivering results. We will double down on that to make more progress for our people. I noticed that the glee on the government benches as you congratulated yourselves on housing delivery. One of these great moments of launches, the Taoiseach was in attendance and one of the families who got the keys for their home had been on a social housing waiting list for 14 years. 14 years. That is a generation. That is the time in which people raise their families. 14 years. And as we speak and meet here today, there are families, as I said to you earlier, who are raising their own children in the box rooms of their parents' homes. There are kids and families and B&B's and hotels and a sense of desperation everywhere. I asked you about the 2 billion euro that you are sitting on. 2 billion euro of an undershoot in terms of capital spend. How in the name of God are you falling 2 billion short on your spend, sitting on 2 billion euro, in circumstances where people are on housing lists for a decade and more, living in hotels and B&B's and desperate with no real prospects. That needs to be explained by you, Minister. Minister McGrath. There is no 2 billion euro of capital underspend in housing. As you know, it is always the case that the final quarter of the year is the period in which there is the largest delivery. That is when schemes get closed out. That is when accounts get done. That is when drawdown of payments happen. So there will be no such underspend in relation to housing capital this year. Any underspend, as you know, is subject to a carry forward provision as well, whereby it can be carried forward, subject to an overall 10 per cent rule in terms of 10 per cent of the ceiling for that vote, into the following year. But the truth is, and you do not want to hear it, that all of the schemes that are making a difference for people who want to buy a home in Ireland, whether it be the Help to Buy scheme, the work of the Land Development Agency, the work of Minister O'Brien in bringing forward the First Home Shared Equity scheme, where over 600 eligibility certificates have actually been provided at this point in time. You have opposed all of those because you seem to have a calculation in mind that it is in your political self-interest to sustain a housing crisis. On this side of the House, we are focused on doing everything we possibly can to resolve it and to ensure that people who want to purchase a home in Ireland are given direct support by the State to do so.