Affordable Housing: Motion [Private Members]
Dail Éireann — 2024-05-08
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Rose Conway-Walsh (SF), Mayo

I was really glad to hear one of the Government TDs at the Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach earlier say a number of times that we should declare a housing emergency. Even the Government's own TDs are saying it. Its councillors and candidates on the ground recognise it and they are saying the same thing. The Minister needs to listen to them, but they also need to take ownership of it because they are part of a party that designed and constructed where we are today, whether that be in terms of failing to build houses or transferring €1 billion every year to the HAP scheme and all of that. Housing is the single biggest issue facing our country. How we respond now as a people to this historical challenge will resonate for generations. Sinn Féin believes in the power of housing to transform so many parts of our society and economy.
I know this Government is not serious. The reason I know that is because it has no interest in making housing affordable. I know that because its members refuse to say they want house prices to come down. They just want to build enough to appease people, but not enough to address the housing crisis or emergency. Too many people are making too much money from the current situation. They are doing so off the backs of ordinary workers and families. They are either willing to ignore the hardship people face or deny it.
Less than half of the 150 houses promised in County Mayo were built in 2023, and not a single affordable public home was built there. Sinn Féin will deliver affordable housing in every county. The Government did not even meet half of its own modest targets, but everyone suffers when the Government fails to deliver social and affordable homes. Less supply means higher house prices and unaffordable rents. These failures mean more and more of peoples' hard-earned wages being handed over to landlords and banks. It is hard to overstate the economic damage this is doing overall. The average age of the people who can buy houses is 40. This is the single biggest factor in driving the birth rate lower and lower. It is why we have a looming pension crisis. The failure of this Government to address housing and the success it had in constructing the housing crisis as it is impacting every bit of our society. I am sorry but that is a fact. This did not happen by accident. I wonder about the cost of the number of children who are homeless and the cost we are going to pay into the future.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2024-05-08/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:52:55+00:00
Sitting date: 2024-05-08