The national well-being strategy recognises that housing and having a home which is a safe, secure place to live is absolutely key to well-being. When the Government took office, the programme for Government promised to hold a referendum on the right to housing. Every single day, we see the effect that the housing crisis is having on people throughout the country. When will this referendum that was promised be held?

I wish everyone going to attend Dublin Pride this Saturday a happy Pride. When I attended my first Pride, about 28 or 29 years ago now, there was no marriage equality, no discussion of marriage equality in the country and even no discussion of things like civil partnership. These things were not talked about. As others have noted, this was just a year or two after homosexuality had been decriminalised. In fact, we lived then in an Ireland that had only recently made contraception widely available. It had been avail…

Regarding the Cabinet committee on housing, I ask the Taoiseach about the numbers of people who are sleeping rough. An article written by Laoise Neylon in the Dublin Inquirer stated that last November 180 people were counted as sleeping rough in Dublin by the Dublin Simon Community outreach team. Yet despite this, the official figure of the number of people sleeping rough published by the Dublin Region Homeless Executive Dublin, DRHE, was just 91. How is it possible that half of the people who were counted as sleep…

On reform, I want to ask about a 2008 report from the Law Reform Commission. The report in question took the form of a consultation paper and it contains a number of recommendations in respect of expert witnesses. In 2016, a report was published by the commission in which it reiterated the need for reform and clarity in the use of expert witnesses. There is serious concern about the role of expert witnesses in cases where children who allege abuse are moved into the custody of their alleged abusers. Surely the time…

Between 2010 and 2019, Ireland had one of the largest increases in Europe in the numbers of people aged 25 to 34 still living in their childhood bedrooms. Since the Minister took office, home ownership has fallen to its lowest level in more than 50 years. Rents have reached record highs and the number of people living in homeless emergency accommodation has exceeded 12,000 for the first time. Last year, the Minister returned €246 million to the Exchequer in funds left unspent. That money could and should have been …

I move: That Dáil Éireann: notes that: - home ownership rates have been falling in Ireland since their peak in 1991; - while the 1991 Census showed owner-occupiers making up 79.3 per cent of households, this had fallen to 67.6 per cent in 2016; - this fall in rates of home ownership has been accompanied by an increase in the proportion of the population residing in the private rental sector, which more than doubled between 1991 and 2016, rising from 8 per cent to 18.2 per cent; - rent prices are now at record level…

I will begin by responding to a few things the Minister said. The Social Democrats did not support the Affordable Housing Act because there is no transparency whatsoever in it regarding the hundreds of millions of euro that is handed over to developers and how this impacts their profits. We want transparency on that and it should be in the Affordable Housing Act. We are going to propose measures on that shortly and I hope the Government will support them. In terms of the LDA, how on earth could a Government set up …

Vótáil.

I ask the Taoiseach about staffing levels in the National Building Control Office. Building and fire safety defects, mica and pyrite have cost the State billions. The human cost of building defects has been devastating in terms of the trauma it causes for people who are living in homes that are not safe while the developers responsible got away and evade any meaningful accountability. Since it was set up, the National Building Control Office has never been fully staffed. The director of the office, Ms Mairéad Phela…

It has never been properly staffed.

The local authority will not even advertise the positions.

When the eviction ban was lifted, the Government promised that a range of measures would be put in place to prevent people from becoming homeless. It is important to acknowledge that good work has been done by local authorities with the tenant in situ scheme. However, many renters are still falling through the cracks and are still being evicted. Dublin City Council have said that they are already close to meeting this year's tenant in situ target of 450 tenancies. What is being done to expand the tenant in situ sch…

I am going to read a short extract from an email that a mother of two children who is facing eviction into homelessness has sent to me. She has given me her full permission to use this. She says: 5 years ago, I fled domestic violence. In the 6-month period that we were homeless the effect on my son's mental health was devastating. At 7 years old he was suicidal and permanently suspended from school. In the past 5 years we have fought hard to save this boy's life. I have no doubt being homeless again will take all t…

I thank the Minister for that answer, which I appreciate. This is another extract from the email that a mother of two children, who is facing homelessness, has sent to me. She wrote: My daughter has been diagnosed with severe dyslexia and is getting the help she needs in a new school. At 4th class this is her 4th school to attend. [...She needs] the stability and routine of staying in the same school and moving again. My health is suffering, the stress of the homeless crisis has resulted in my blood pressure going …

Since the Minister took office, almost €1 billion allocated to the housing budget has not been spent. This was money that could, and should, have been used to build social and affordable homes. The measures that he announced recently, involving the spending of €1 billion, included more subsidies and handing over of public money to private developers, including the waiving of development levies. Subsidies to developers have increased and their profits have soared. Since the Minister took office, the profits of the l…

That is the crucial question. In the years since the Minister took office, public subsidies to developers have increased, as have their profits. Here is another measure that we do not know will be passed on to people buying homes. There is no transparency around developers' profits. The largest developers are publicly listed, so we can see how their profits have increased in recent years, but there is no transparency around the other companies availing of these subsidies and the development levy waiver. Will the Mi…

If there was transparency around profits, we would know.

And no transparency around their profits.

The solution being suggested is a very good and practical one that needs to be looked at. Is it ideal or a substitute for building more housing? Absolutely not, but there are families where there is a lot of overcrowding at present. There are situations in my constituency where three families are in a regular house, all using one bathroom and one toilet. They have space to extend and put in another toilet or bathroom, which would take a massive stress out of the situation, but they just do not have the money or abi…

From the point of view of the Social Democrats, it must be an absolute given when building with more sustainable materials that it must always be done while building homes to high-quality standards and meeting building regulations and standards. Strong independent inspection and strong enforcement are needed when it comes to building any home. We have a poor recent history of that, unfortunately. All buildings used to be built with sustainable materials in Dublin city. They were built with wood. The reason we moved…