Rory Hearne
Dublin North-West · Social Democrats · Ireland
“I thank you, a Leas Cheann-Comhairle, for your work and support during the year and thank all the staff here. I wish my colleagues in government the best of luck over the summer and respite from our robust engagement. We look forward to going at it again in the autumn.”
“The Dublin public will be very upset when they realise their fire fighters and emergency response service are at risk of being split and downgraded.”
“I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this motion. It is important to have a discussion about the context of education costs and back-to-school costs. Of course, the context is massive inequality in this country.”
“However, what it is actually doing is throwing families into even more stress on top of not being able to pay the basic bills. In my constituency to respond and support families struggling with back-to-school costs, the Finglas voluntary food and family support service, Feed Our Homeless, last year organised help for families with a pop-u…”
“A second tier of child benefit would lift 55,000 children out of poverty but the Government will not do it. It costs the same as what it has given in tax breaks to developers, investor funds and large fast-food giants. Childhoods pass quickly. No child should have their future limited by poverty.”
“The Government is ramming through planning legislation this week that will exempt sheds out the back without proper scrutiny. It is satisfied with handing our young people to vulture landlords. The Government is now offering a future of renting a shed out the back with no rights whatsoever.”
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“with the [European] Commission, a plan to improve military mobility [in Europe] ... this will include proposals to make our roads, bridges, tunnels, train lines, airports and other infrastructure projects able to cope with large scale military movements ... We are preparing our European infrastructure for large scale military movements but we do not prepare for or invest in our European infrastructure to ensure our people have housing, healthcare, decent quality of services or even transport. It has to be worrying to see our European Commission talk about preparing our European infrastructure for large-scale military movements. Where are the large-scale military movements going to? What war are we going to be part of? What are we talking about here and where is Europe bringing us?”
“Yet when we see a housing crisis across the European Union and millions who are without a proper home, there is no such suspension of the fiscal rules to enable social spending for that. When we look at issues around the cost of living and basic services for disability around the European Union and when we look at poverty, there is no such relaxing of fiscal rules. I question why we are suspending fiscal rules for defence and pumping billions in and yet we are not doing that for people's basic standards of living. When we talk about the safety and security of our people, their welfare is the basic foundation block of building safety and security. I am deeply concerned that we are marching as part of a European drumbeat to a war. Ms Kallas said: Next week ... [she] will present ...”
“Ireland needs to play a role of peacemaker and call out that the only way to end wars is not just by pumping money into weapons or killing more and more people, where whoever loses decides they have lost the most amount, but by diplomacy, intervention and a human rights framework that we have signed up to as a country and are part of. I again urge our Government to pursue paths of peace, diplomacy, pressure and economic sanctions rather than just this drive to a deeper pumping of billions into war and this war machine that is being built up. It is deeply disappointing that the European Union is suspending its fiscal rules and basically saying to countries that they should spend whatever they need to pump up defence spending.”
“She said: "Wars are lost by whoever runs out of money or soldiers first." Wars are not just lost or ended by whoever runs out of money or soldiers. They are ended by interventions by states through the United Nations, different mechanisms, diplomatic measures and peace negotiations. I am deeply disturbed by that statement. What is the future for ending the Ukraine war? Is it constantly pumping in more money and soldiers with more deaths? How many deaths are we going to reach? Will it be 500,000 or 1 million people who will die in that war?”
“Of course we have to stop the Ukraine-Russia war and that Russian invasion but war is not the only way to do it. We have to find peaceful ways to resolve this war. I want to speak in short about and quote Ms Kaja Kallas, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy and Vice President of the European Commission. Her comments deeply worried me when I saw them. This is from last week. Her role is to lead a more strategic and assertive foreign and security policy at EU level. She is responsible for strengthening Europe's security and defence. She points out that she is ensuring Europe stands with Ukraine and co-ordinating the work to build a European defence union. She said: "Wars are lost by whoever runs out of money or soldiers first." I want to repeat that statement.”
“We call for and want to see further strengthening of economic sanctions on Russia. We believe the European Union and Ireland could be doing more to implement those sanctions. The use of military force is not the only way to challenge aggressors like Russia. The economic sanctions are also very important and the European Union and Ireland should be pushing harder on this by increasing the sanctions that are there. In this debate, I want to talk about our concerns around the undermining of Ireland's neutrality, the push to war that is happening at a European level, and that greater European involvement in war and defence being termed as increasing the European Union's security and defence. I am deeply concerned about the direction the European Union is going in.”
“These are human beings whose lives have been wiped out by that war. Up to 1.5 million people are casualties of the Russian invasion, an illegal invasion, with many war crimes as part of that. When we talk about the war in Ukraine and European defence, we need to keep those numbers in mind. The question that comes to my mind is how many more tens or hundreds of thousands of people are going to be killed in the Russian invasion and the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian war? When we talk about building European defence and this move to war and war preparedness in Europe, we really need to question how many Europeans are going to get killed in the ongoing war and how many people are going to lose their lives. I reiterate our firm support for Ukraine's sovereignty and its territorial integrity.”
“Go raibh míle maith agat. I start by expressing the Social Democrats' warm welcome for President Zelenskyy's upcoming visit and our absolute, unreserved condemnation of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which is an imperial war that has caused massive loss of life. We talk about the war in Ukraine and Russia's attack and sometimes I think there has not been enough focus on the number of people killed in that war, and particularly military - the soldiers on either side. We do not know the exact figures, but from what we do know they are absolutely shocking. There are potentially 250,000 Russian soldiers dead with up to 1 million casualties, including wounded. In Ukraine, the figures are between 60,000 and 100,000 soldiers killed. That is at least 350,000 people, many of them soldiers, killed in that war.”
“They look at politicians and the Government and all they see are older people making decisions that seem to make their lives worse or at least do not help them. This would be a real way of valuing young people as equals. I remember being a student at 17 and going to university. One of the first political things I did in my life was to organise a petition to try to get the date of the general election changed from a Friday to a weekend. I felt it was disadvantaging students from engaging in politics. We need to look at the ways in which we run our elections and referendums to ensure they increase participation, particularly for young people. They need actions that show we value them and care and want to give them a stake in society. This would be a key area.”
“This is not just happening in Ireland; it is happening across the world. The mental health of our young people is declining. We need to engage them seriously in developing solutions so we can help address the mental health disaster affecting our young people. Part of this is the issue of housing, their future and what future they see in this country. Surveys show that young people see emigrating as their future. They do not see a future here. There is a real opportunity to give young people hope. We give them hope by respecting them and valuing them as equals. A key way to do this would be to give them the right to vote, and give them the ability to partake and be valued as equal citizens. I see this in my constituency, working with youth services in places such as Finglas and Ballymun. I see the disconnect with young people.”
“I thank Deputy Farrelly for introducing the Bill. Dr. Farrelly and I were lecturers together in the department of applied social studies in Maynooth, and one of the areas he worked on in particular, as was spoken about, was the issue of youth work. His research has been in this area and he is one of the foremost experts in the country on it. We really need to take seriously the evidence base understanding and the experiential understanding of young people and what they need and what they are looking for. I want to speak very briefly about what is facing our young people today. Look at the things they talk about in particular. Mental health is a major issue. There is so much isolation and people feeling undervalued. I welcome the young people in the Gallery. They have a sense of not being listened to and being unheard.”
“BusConnects, as I said, is an ambitious project which has huge potential but only if it actually serves the people in the communities and the areas.”
“The public transport has to work for people, and I am being inundated with issues from people who are saying very clearly that the changes to the bus services are not working. The National Transport Authority and the Minister need to take this on board and we need to make our bus services work. If we genuinely want to get people out of their cars and if we want to actually help them with the cost-of-living crisis and the cost of motoring, then we need to make sure our public services and our bus services, actually work. People are caught between a rock and a hard place, getting back into the car because the bus is not working, facing even higher costs, or relying on a transport system that for some people is no longer working for them.”
“9 route, leading to the north of Glasnevin being disconnected from the centre of Glasnevin with an effect on schools, sports and other social activities. Many routes have been curtailed or stopped, including the Nos. 9, 13, 11, 14, 40 and 83 and the replacement routes, the E spine and the F spine, have not served the communities in the same way. We have huge issues of connectivity, particularly for people who have mobility issues and for children trying to go to school. For example, Finglas East has become effectively a bus desert with less frequent services. There is no direct bus service from Glasnevin Avenue down to O'Connell Street now. This is having a huge impact and while I support BusConnects, and it working, and public transport working, this is a mess for people.”
“Because of the mess made of the introduction of phase 7 of BusConnects, people in my constituency, in Finglas, Ballymun and Glasnevin, are being forced back into their cars because the bus service is not working in the same way as it used to. They have been pushed back into paying higher costs of fuel and we can see that the traffic in Dublin now is absolutely diabolical. It has got worse and there is gridlock. People are forced to pay more and more in fuel costs as they sit in their cars because public transport is not working. When we look at the issues in my constituency, there have been huge changes in places like Beneavin Road where the bus stop has actually been removed. We have elderly people who cannot access public transport. We have the ending of the No.”
“Public-private partnerships were an idea that came from England and they were essentially about privatising infrastructure. Governments used the excuse at the time that they did not have the finance, and they needed these forms of private finance to come in. It is making the same argument about housing now and we see the result of it. Hundreds of millions of euro is being paid by motorists in profit to these companies. We should be taking the privatised public-private partnerships back into public ownership and reducing that cost. Public-private partnerships are not a way to deliver infrastructure. When we look at the cost of motoring, it costs over €10,000 per year for the average petrol a diesel car on the road. I want to talk about the issue in my own constituency and what is happening now.”
“The issue Sinn Féin has raised is extremely important. The cost of motoring, particularly in the context of tolls, is a massive issue for people. This is another example of the price gouging taking place in this country. The Government throws its hands in the air and asks, "What can we do about the cost-of-living crisis?" The Government created the aspect of the cost-of-living crisis that relates to tolls. It was Fianna Fáil that brought in the public-private partnerships back in the 2000s in the years of the Celtic tiger. I know quite a bit about this because I wrote my PhD about public-private partnerships. I remember that one of the best descriptions of them was, not public-private partnerships, but plundering the public purse.”
“Michael’s House to ensure people with disabilities have that quality of life, and so their families do too. I ask the Government to do more on that.”
“These are high-risk situations. We need a much more considered and significant funding response that addresses these challenges. We cannot just let them go on. People who have disabilities have every right to a decent standard of living, an independent life and supported housing and to be able to live a quality life like anybody else, but as disabled people explain over and over, along with their carers and families, that is not the situation. Yes, the Government is dealing with and responding to decades and decades - indeed, since the foundation of the State - of inadequate support for people with disabilities, but we have to get it right now. We have to provide that republic of equality, particularly for disabled people. We need extra effort for cases like these and services like St.”
“Gabhaim buíochas leis an Aire Stáit but that is an inadequate response. He acknowledged that the HSE is facing significant challenges in the provision of residential placements and in the availability of suitable housing and staffing, as well as the increasing costs of providing residential care and the changing needs of service users. He has outlined the challenge, but we need to see solutions. While there is an increase in funding, it is clearly not enough and that is the issue. What about families like the one in the case I raised, where the parents of a child of 32 years of age with Down’s syndrome, who are in their 70s, are absolutely terrified about her future and where she will go? We have a significant waiting list for people, eight of them, as I said, over 66 years, and 22 aged between 46 and 65 years.”
“Between hospital staffing costs, operation costs and, crucially, the lack of multi-annual funding, they are projecting a funding deficit for 2025. If the Minister of State can give me a response to these questions, I would appreciate it.”
“She really enjoys going and participating in the various activities but there are no respite or social supports outside of this for her parents, who are now in their 70s. They are physically, emotionally and mentally exhausted. Their enduring worry is what will happen to her when they die. There are no residential places available for her. The Minister of State can think about that emotional and mental exhaustion of parents in that situation, who are concerned about what will happen to their child when they pass on. Where will she be minded? Who will look after her? Services like St. Michael’s House are struggling to keep up with demand for respite and residential care, which is leaving families in unimaginable and unsustainable situations as they worry about what will happen to their adult children.”
“There are also those who do not have the capacity to provide care for their children any more because they have got too old or the needs have increased to the point that it is not sustainable for them to continue to provide care in the home. As I have outlined, there are significant waiting lists. I have been contacted by the parents of a woman - their youngest child - who is 32 years of age. She has Down’s syndrome and associated medical and health issues. As well as Down’s syndrome, she has a visual impairment, mobility and balance issues, sleep apnoea, for which she uses a machine, and speech and language difficulties. She attends a St. Michael’s House day service from 9.30 a.m. to 3 p.m.”
“There is currently a residential waiting list for 55 individuals: eight are aged 66 and over, 22 are aged 46 to 65, 15 are aged 31 to 45 and ten are aged 18 to 30. Forty of these individuals are classified as high risk, highlighting the urgent need for placements and increased resources to provide care for them. Unfortunately, due to resource constraints, St. Michael's House placed a pause on new additions to the residential waiting list from 14 March this year. An issue facing families across the country and my constituency concerns children who are now adults and who have disabilities. Their families are deeply concerned about what will happen when the parents pass away. Who will care for their children?”
“Táim anseo today to speak about an issue related to disability services in my constituency but which affects the wider Dublin area and the country. I will speak about St. Michael's House and about a constituent whose issue I have raised and want to raise again today. St. Michael's House on the Ballymun Road provides a range of services and supports for people with disabilities and their families, from residential supports and independent living to clinical support, day supports and respite. St. Michael's House is also a lead agency for the Dublin CDNT, which supports thousands of children and also has a waiting list for day services. I want to talk about residential services for older service users.”
“In my constituency, from Ballymun to Beaumont, I meet people who are really struggling. Ministers are dog-whistling in saying that all the immigrants and asylum seekers are to blame because we have messed up so badly. It is the Government's failures. It is disgraceful that Ministers have turned and dog-whistled, and are blaming immigrants, because the real cause of the housing crisis is their failures. Why are they not calling out the Irish landlords who are evicting people into homelessness? Why are they not talking about the 100,000 vacant and derelict homes? Ireland is not full; it is full of crap from this Government which has failed over and over. I absolutely condemn the way it has taken this turn.”
“In recent weeks we have seen in Citywest and Drogheda absolute violence with the potential for children and adults to be murdered with that arson attack. That is the reality. The Government can talk about condemning and say it absolutely thinks this is disgraceful, but I encourage people to read what the Hope and Courage Collective has put out. It makes it clear that it is the words of political leaders that have fanned these flames. What they have done is they have dog whistled. The Minister of State can talk about it, but there is no denying that what the Tánaiste did was dog-whistling to the far right because it is cheap political right-wing populism; that is what it is. People are hurting. People are being devastated every day by the housing crisis.”
“The Government has gone full Farage and this report explains why. Meanwhile, we have the Minister for housing scrambling around-----”
“Yesterday's report from the Department of Finance said that the housing disaster will continue for another 15 years. That seems to be an optimistic forecast based on housing delivery doubling to 60,000 by 2030. We are facing 30 years of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil housing failure unless their housing plans radically change or they are removed from office. The lives of generations of people in this country have been destroyed and will be destroyed. They have been betrayed and abandoned because this Government, despite all of its resources, has failed to meet the basic needs and deliver homes to people. Given this damning assessment, maybe it is not surprising the Government has gone looking for scapegoats. In recent weeks, Ministers have pointed the finger at migrants, State agencies, NGOs and EU law.”
“People fought and died for this vote. We will see millions of people coming out to vote on Friday in this presidential election, including old people who may have not been able to leave their homes for a long time, people who are ill, disabled people and young people. We will see them coming out to exercise their franchise because they hold dear and understand the importance of the Presidency. That is why I am deeply critical of the idea of spoiling votes. We need to see changes, however. People feel excluded and we can see that. We can see what happened in Citywest, which was absolutely disgraceful. I call on politicians in this House to be careful with their language. Unfortunately, we saw it yesterday. There was no leadership but rather the fanning of flames of hate.”
“It is relevant because our President encapsulates and has a role in guiding us as a country around the values, nature and purpose of our country and what we are achieving. In that regard, people respect and hold the absolute centrality of the Presidency. We are in favour of engaging with reforms, particularly around citizens in the North of Ireland being able to vote in the presidential election. When it comes to the process, we need to think this through because we want someone holding that position who can represent us all in dignity. The President is our Head of State who will have that position for seven years. It is not a decision that should be taken lightly. Indeed, it is one of the reasons I am deeply frustrated and critical of the idea of people spoiling their votes in a presidential election.”
“We have increasingly seen Presidents, within the bounds of the Presidency, engage in the discussion and debate about what type of country we have. That is important. What we need is a critical, embracing discussion of everyone about the type of country we have. We only have to look at the record levels of homelessness and the way in which we have a generation who are locked out of a home. Indeed, I encourage everyone to read the article written in her.ie by Kat O’Connor about her generation being forced to accept a housing crisis. She is 31 and has reached a point of hopelessness when it comes to owning a home in Ireland. A total of 70% of 25-year olds still live at home. Why is this relevant to this debate?”
“I thank Aontú and others for bringing forward the motion today. It is an important discussion about how we choose our President, the processes set out for that and who is eligible to vote. The Social Democrats are open to engaging in a cross-party discussion about the processes in place to elect a President. Uachtarán na hÉireann, as has been set out, is the highest office in the land. It is a position that sets out the vision for Ireland and one that everyone in this country holds dear. That is why we have seen such strength of feeling around this presidential election from different perspectives. In many ways, people want to see a President who not only represents them, but also is a part of them. Over time, we have seen the nature of the Presidency change, even within the structures and restrictions of the Constitution.”
“What they told me, which is part of why I am so frustrated and angry at the Minister's response, was that families in this country were still sleeping in Garda stations. They are sleeping in cars and tents and on couches. The family homelessness crisis in this country is worse than it has ever been and what do we see from this Government? We see no new ideas, no Housing First for homeless families and no eviction ban, just waffle about supply and demand. The Government is out of touch when it comes to ideas and it is also out of touch when it comes to any sense of empathy or care regarding what is being done to children and families in homelessness in this country.”
“There is plenty of Government action, however, for the wealth funds, the corporate landlords, the big fast food chains, and developers. The Government ignored the Social Democrats' proposals to help people struggling with the cost-of living-crisis, for example, our proposal to introduce energy credits worth €400 targeted at households in the lowest 40% of incomes. It ignored our proposals to introduce a weekly cost-of-disability payment, to remove the means test on carers, to cut childcare fees and student fees, to introduce a sports and activity payment for all children, and to introduce a second tier of child benefit. Yesterday, I visited the Focus Ireland homeless services in Dublin city.”
“The third biggest owner of shares in Glenveagh is the UK-based Helikon Investments. These funds are gaining from the VAT cut to developers. This is where the profits are going. These foreign wealth funds have benefitted more from the budget than ordinary families have. Regarding the hikes in the price of groceries, people are struggling to pay for food but the Government will not push for transparency on the profit gouging that is going on in food and energy prices. The Government voted down our developer profits transparency legislation. The Government is all talk, waffle, hand wringing and crocodile tears of concern but there is no actual action when it comes to the cost of living and the housing crisis.”
“We reduce the tax revenue, as the Government is doing, which is a waste of public funding, but it is the opportunity cost of the loss of other potentials and what we could be doing with that €5 billion. We could be using it to fund social and affordable housing delivery. We could be using it to develop public childcare. We could be using it to develop public transport. Instead, public money is being given to wealthy foreign funds which are the main shareholders of the big developers. Take Glenveagh, for example. Look at its share price at the moment and at who its main shareholders are. Does the Minister know who the main shareholder of Glenveagh is? It is a company called Teleios Capital. I was not familiar with it but it is a Swiss hedge fund. The second biggest owner of shares in Glenveagh is Fidelity Investments, a US-based fund.”
“However, the budget has done the very thing that Fine Gael says it is not about. What is has done is to narrow the country's tax base by over €1.2 billion. Next year, the combined costs of the VAT cut to developers and the VAT cut to the retail and hospitality sectors combined will be almost €1.2 billion. Over the lifetime of the Government, that will be almost €5 billion of tax cuts to those who clearly do not need them. It is one of the most fiscally irresponsible acts because there is no requirement around affordability of housing. There is no requirement for those VAT cuts to be passed on in terms of cheaper goods or cheaper housing. It is also what we describe in economics as an opportunity cost because it affects us twice.”
“The Minister put it to my colleague that it is about the politics of the lowest kind when he makes a very clear point. The Minister made decisions and had priorities, one of which was to prioritise animal welfare over domestic violence, just as he prioritised VAT cuts for developers, the burger barons and the hoteliers, over people who are in poverty. The Minister made those decisions. To try to heckle my colleague over that decision is the real politics of the lowest kind. Fine Gael's record of 14 years in government is that we have over 5,000 children homeless. The Minister talks about failure and politics of the lowest kind but that is the politics of the lowest kind. Fine Gael used to claim that it was the party of fiscal prudence and sound financial management.”
“I completely back my colleague, Deputy O' Callaghan. The Minister talked about politics of the lowest kind. Politics of the lowest kind is to allow over 5,000 children to be homeless every single year and to vote, year after year, against implementing an eviction ban. The Minister is a Minister of homelessness. He stands over all the things he been done in this country, all the great development, but year after year, thousands of children and their families are made homeless, and many of them are linked with domestic violence. The Government has forced families who have been in situations of domestic violence into homelessness because of its failure to put in place an eviction ban, and its failure to take the homelessness crisis seriously.”
“The children do not understand and cannot conceptualise the same way as an adult who understands, “Okay, the house is physically unsound. We are doing what we can. It might not fall down tomorrow; it might fall down in a few weeks.” Children cannot understand that. They wake up every morning wondering whether the house is going to fall down around them. Let us think of the impact on those children, the stress they live with, and how that impacts on how their brain develops. We know stress in children has lifelong impacts. The Government does not consider the children of those living in homes affected by pyrite, in homelessness, or in hidden homelessness. We need a change in our approach to housing. We need to treat it as a human right, and supporting 100% Redress is the start of that.”
“They see it and feel it. They see a Government that gives VAT cuts to developers and builders but will not fund the homes collapsing around them. We talk about inequality and the Taoiseach harps on about how he is all for a progressive society and Fianna Fáil was always the party that had a social conscience. There is no social conscience in Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael when thousands of people’s homes are crumbling around them and they have no sense of where the end point is. Where is the point when they will be able to live in a home where their children will be able to wake up every morning without the fear that the house is going to crumble around them? Something I have written extensively about and highlighted is the impact of the housing crisis on children. This is one aspect of our 20-year housing crisis.”
“They feel trapped. This is absolutely unacceptable. Regarding the notion of this grant, this is not a project or initiative that people are undertaking; these are vital repairs to homes that directly result from regulatory failure. One of the most frustrating and annoying aspects of this is that it also results from Government failure and the hands-off approach that allowed cowboy builders and developers to wreak havoc on these communities. Where is the accountability? Where is the forcing of those developers, some of whom are still in business today and will benefit from the VAT cut the Government introduced in the budget? Builders and developers get VAT cuts, and what do the people whose homes are crumbling get? They get grants that do not even cover the cost of remediating their homes. These people are not stupid.”
“Not only are they physically unsafe, they are damaging the health, particularly the mental health, of the people living in them. I wrote in my own book about a concept called chronic housing stress, which is chronic, psychosocial strain that results from living in situations of prolonged periods of housing stress. One of the causes is when housing is substandard whether because of mould, damp, or a structural problem. I quoted in my book survey research that showed that approximately 70% of those directly affected by mica and pyrite were suffering from anxiety, 65% had difficulty sleeping, 46% were affected by low mood and 25% were affected by depression. They called it a constant source of dread every day, a dark place where they could not escape from the fear of what was to come. They do not feel secure in their homes.”
“As has been pointed out very clearly in this motion, what the Government has set out and given so far is not redress; it is grants, and again, as has been pointed out, in many situations those grants are not even coming near to covering the costs of the damage people are living with. The people living in these homes need and deserve redress. That is why the Social Democrats are completely backing this motion and will continue to support it. Deputy Ward and others will continue to push for these homeowners to get what they need and deserve throughout this Dáil term. Is ceart daonna é tithíocht. Housing is a human right but the Government does not believe that. If it did, it would not allow this situation where people are living in unsafe homes that are literally crumbling around them.”
“The Social Democrats are happy to strongly support this motion. I thank Deputy Ward and the Independent and Parties Technical Group for bringing it forward. It is absolutely one of the most important motions that will be brought forward in this Dáil term because the issue that faces people across the country who are affected by defective blocks is twofold. It is State and market failure. It is market failure because developers and builders who built these homes knew what they were doing. Where is the accountability? The State was responsible for ensuring the building of homes was to a decent quality and safe standard. The State failed.”
“Unfortunately, that plan is likely to be one that leaves us all terrified long after the Hallowe'en ghosts have disappeared. We need a radical change in our housing policy. The Minister is not delivering it. This Government is not delivering it. It was elected on a false promise and I will keep calling it out, the false claim that the Government would build 40,000 homes. Had it been known during the election that the Government was nowhere near that and that 30,000 homes would be built last year and not 40,000 homes, it would not have been elected on the basis it did and secured a mandate, and we would have alternative housing plans in place.”
“Our kids are talking about how Hallowe'en is coming up but the scariest thing about this Hallowe'en will not be the ghosts or goblins or even Donald Trump costumes; it will be Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael housing policies that are absolutely terrifying renters and generation locked-out as landlords hike the rents up further under the Government's new measures. Young people are living in fear of never being able to buy their own homes. Of course, the Government's biggest Hallowe'en scare is its phantom housing plan, which has been promised for months but is clearly stuck in the spirit world that is the space between the Department, the Minister, the Taoiseach and the vulture fund lobbyists. At Hallowe'en, will a space open up and the plan appear?”
“How is an affordable home a vacant property grant given to a landlord who is a multiple property owner? They avail of the vacant property grant. How is that an affordability measure? I would like the Minister to answer that question. Vacant property grants should not be allocated under the affordable purchase and affordable rental schemes. I do not see how it is affordable housing, particularly when a landlord can get and use this vacant property grant. Maybe the Minister can give us the figures on how many multiple property owners are currently in receipt of the vacant property grant. At the moment, we are seeing decorations go up across the country.”
“I ask him to go back and tell the councils they can do this rather than feeding this situation whereby there is huge uncertainty. It is similar to the uncertainty in the AHBs. The Minister said there were no issues around delays in projects. There clearly are some delays in some aspects of projects but the fundamental point he made is that he will not agree to every application for affordable housing that comes to him because the funding is not there. There needs to be a sufficient allocation of funding. I will also raise the issue of affordable housing. In regard to affordable housing delivery schemes, the Minister said 7,500 new affordable purchase and cost-rental homes will be delivered in 2026. He said that would be an increase. Will he answer a question for me?”