Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions
Dail Éireann — 2026-04-29
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Ivana Bacik (LAB), Dublin Bay South

I welcome our Polish community and also a group of students who are with me from Trinity and schools in Dublin and Wexford.
Far too many people in Ireland suffer the trauma of losing their home. That is a direct result of the Government's policy. It prioritises the market over people. It did it in March, incentivising landlords to evict with new rent laws, and it is doing it again now, this week telling 16,000 Ukrainian refugees to fend for themselves in an overheated rental market or return to a war zone. So much for solidarity with Ukraine. In Dublin, even if a person's budget is €1,500 per month, there are just two two-bed properties for rent on daft.ie today. The housing crisis has been normalised on the Taoiseach's watch. As a local TD, it is getting harder and harder to support people through this deepening crisis, but each year, the Government is pursuing the same policies and things are getting worse. We are now hearing from constituents who are even grappling with suicidal thoughts as they and their families face the horror of eviction.
Threshold supported more than 10,000 households in the first three months of this year alone. That was 3% of all households in the private rented sector that are struggling. People cannot cope. I know the Taoiseach would love for homeless figures to reduce but the Government is doing nothing about it. He must face up to the fact that its policies are making things worse and that there are people in Ireland who are profiting from this social disaster. Scarcity drives profits up for land hoarders and higher rents benefit price-gouging landlords, yet the Government is subsidising those who are speculating on this social disaster. When it pats itself on the back, as I know it will, for the mortgage drawdown figures today, it is missing the point. The Government needs to close the door to lobbyists and open its eyes to the solutions before it, because we know what works. The eviction ban slowed the pace of homelessness. In the 1960s, under a Fianna Fáil Government, the National Building Agency, a State construction company, built homes at scale, lifting thousands of families out of squalor, yet the Taoiseach ridicules Labour's proposal to transform the Land Development Agency into a new State construction company.
The Government's policies are failing people. The Government is failing the 5,500 children in homelessness, failing the 60% of renters unable to afford rent, and failing the 60,000 on the housing list. Yesterday, the Cabinet failed once again to agree measures to stop Airbnb and short-term letting companies from mopping up the supply of homes, and at the same time, the Government decided to throw thousands of Ukrainian refugees to the mercy of the rental market. It has passed laws unleashing a tsunami of eviction notices and its solutions are "shedsits" and tax breaks for developers. When will the Government take radical action to end the housing disaster, stop evictions of renters and refugees, and ramp up the Land Development Agency to build homes at scale?

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-04-29/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-21T01:01:08+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-29