Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2025-12-18
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Pearse Doherty (SF), Donegal

Cuirim fáilte roimh an ambasadóir chuig Tithe an Oireachtais. Cuirim fáilte roimh na páistí chuig Tithe an Oireachtais fosta.
As we approach the last Leaders' Questions, I want to wish you, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle, and all the staff of the House a happy Christmas. Nollaig shona daoibh agus athbhliain faoi mhaise. Hopefully, everyone will have a peaceful new year, and we will see each other back here in the new year again.
Nuair a tháinig an Tánaiste chun ceannaireachta ar Fhine Gael, dúirt sé go ndéanfadh sé a sheacht míle dícheall chun na páistí a fháil amach as an seomra bosca agus isteach i dtithe dá gcuid féin. Dúirt sé le daoine go soiléir go gcaithfear teacht ar réiteach ar thithíocht faoi dheireadh thiar thall, ach a mhalairt atá i gceist agus atá fíor. Mar gheall ar a bhuiséad, d'fhág sé teaghlaigh níos boichte. An teip is mó a fheicimid ná i gcúrsaí tithíochta. Tá méadú de €31,000 tagtha ar phraghsanna tithe le bliain anuas.
This is the final Leaders' Questions of 2025. It brings us to a moment of reckoning. When the Tánaiste became the leader of Fine Gael, he spoke directly to parents and families across the State. He said he would move mountains to get children out of the box room and into a home of their own. He told people plainly that we have to fix housing once and for all. That is what he promised. He raised real expectations among families who are struggling and desperate for change. Yet, as this year closes, the evidence tells us a very different story.
Yesterday, the ESRI confirmed that decisions taken in the budget will result in a significant fall in disposable income for all households. Workers were hit with frozen tax credits and bands while the temporary cost-of-living supports were withdrawn. In other words, after the budget, families are poorer, not better off. Those are the facts. That matters because the cost-of-living crisis did not end on budget night. Families are still struggling with food prices, energy bills, childcare, transport and rents. People are working just as hard - indeed, often harder - yet falling further behind. The budget has locked in hardship. All of this is happening while prices continue to spiral. Prices have surged, wages have not caught up and supports were pulled away by the Tánaiste and his Government. Families are now being told that they have to absorb the difference.
Nowhere is this failure more brutal than in the area of housing. The CSO tells us that house prices have risen by 7.3% in the past year alone. What does that mean to the average person out there? It means that the average price of a home has increased by around €31,000 in the past 12 months. Get that. To keep pace with that single-year increase, a worker would need an equivalent pay increase of over €1,000 per week. No worker, even in their wildest dreams, would expect that. While disposable incomes are falling as a result of the budget decisions, the price of buying a home is racing away at a pace that makes a mockery of the talk of affordability and opportunity.
This is not abstract economics. This is young adults sleeping in their family box rooms. It is parents watching their children's future shrink. It is couples seeing the goalposts moved further away every single month. It is the quiet despair of people realising that no matter how hard they work, home ownership is being priced beyond their reach in real time. The Tánaiste promised to fix housing once and for all.
I ask him this question directly as the Dáil concludes Leaders’ Questions for 2025. Does the Tánaiste accept that his budget left people poorer, that the cost-of-living crisis is still crushing households, and that house prices rising by €31,000 in a single year proves that the promise he made to parents and young people, to get them out of their box rooms and into a home of their own, has been an abject failure?

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Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted.

Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2025-12-18/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:29+00:00
Sitting date: 2025-12-18