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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“We are saying we do not have enough funds to finance housing, but that is €160 billion that could be leveraged. We are also calling on the Government to allocate a significant proportion of the budget surplus this year, which will be approximately €9 billion, into directly delivering affordable housing via housing bodies and local authorities. Providing early-stage finance for housing bodies and local authorities means they can ramp up the delivery of genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy, rather than the affordable housing we have seen come out today in O'Devaney Gardens on public land where €400,000 for a two-bedroom apartment is to be considered an affordable home. On what planet is the Government living for that to be considered affordable?”
“The Government is giving investor funds tax breaks and higher rents and sheds out the back for our locked-out generation. This is "let them eat cake" stuff, only for the Government it is "let them live in sheds". The Government has spent the past ten years incentivising the private market and investor funds through tax breaks, developer levy waivers and help-to-buy schemes, but they are not working. We need a new direction. The Social Democrats is bringing this motion today because we have outlined serious solutions that could solve this housing crisis. First, we are calling on the Government to set up a State savings scheme that would leverage the €160 billion that is in private bank accounts to enable private investment, which is what it would be, in social and affordable housing, just like in France with the Livret A scheme.”
“In 2023, institutional funds bought 6,203 newly completed apartments, while ordinary home buyers bought just 846. The Government claims that rents rising further will incentivise a supply of expensive rental properties that will then lead at some point in the future to rents falling. Where is the evidence that an increase in supply of institutional investor funds build-to-rent housing leads to a fall in rents? A report of the Central Bank found that institutional landlords increase monthly rents 4.1% more than other landlords. The Government's housing plans were sold to the electorate on the basis of a misleading claim that its policies were working. We hear today that it is saying to a generation stuck at home to try a cabin out the back.”
“Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael housing policy is dragging us back to the 19th century. The supposed parties of home ownership have brought about the largest collapse in home ownership levels among young people since the foundation of the State. They are turning our younger generations into long-term tenants of the big landlords once more, only this time it is the US, German and Irish wealthy funds. They have become the parties of the large landlords. Despite the stamp duty measures implemented, institutional investors have continued to buy up existing properties. The build-to-rent apartment developments were never included within the restrictions. Funds have had free reign to snap up tens of thousands of apartments being built across Dublin.”
“The housing crisis has had a truly devastating and harmful impact on her. It has deprived her of the opportunity of independence for years on end, which has made her depressed and constantly anxious about the future. She feels tired at the end of each day as they are understaffed and lonely at the weekend because her friends have migrated. It is soul-destroying for her to spend all of her 20s with her parents while working hard and paying tax to a Government that does not spend her money on affordable housing. Beyond that, the Government's housing crisis is having profound social implications. Research published last week showed that 69% of 25- to 34-year-olds say the cost of owning a home is causing them to delay getting married or having children. It is utterly heartbreaking to hear these stories. When will we say that this is enough?”
“That baby was born into emergency homeless accommodation, which is a traumatising situation for her and her young son. What have we become as a country when we have normalised children being born into homelessness? I was contacted by a housing association in rural Ireland and told of a young couple, a secondary school teacher and a construction worker, who are living in a damp mobile home. They do not qualify for social housing and cannot afford to rent a place. A teacher in her early 30s shared her housing situation with me. She is still living at home after nearly seven years. She and her boyfriend were saving to buy for years but their relationship of more than ten years has broken down. She said that her chances of buying now as a single person are shattered from little to nothing.”
“Some 14,864 people are living a daily trauma of homelessness, of whom 4,510 are children who are suffering adverse childhood experiences with lifelong impacts from growing up in homelessness. There are also tens of thousands of people not counted, measured or considered by our State who are stuck in hidden homelessness. The Government's housing policies are causing a mental health crisis. We do not have enough public health nurses to provide developmental checks and the very construction workers we need are emigrating because they do not see a future in this country where they can have a home of their own. I will give a few examples of the lived reality of this social catastrophe. A mother living in emergency accommodation in my constituency became homeless just before her baby was born. The baby is now a toddler.”
“The Government has been asking us to bring forward solutions and then when we do, the Minister responsible does not bother to turn up. Not being here to discuss the most pressing issue facing this country indicates a lack of openness to new ideas and a lack of seriousness. Today, there are half a million adults stuck living in their childhood box rooms, infantilised and lacking hope of starting their own independent lives. Almost 1 million people are living in the private rental sector. They are struggling with rents and the fear of eviction, which has been worsened by the Government's statements that rent caps could be removed at the end of this year.”
“Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach Gníomhach. We are bringing forward this motion today because the housing crisis is a catastrophe and an emergency. The Government's plans are failing disastrously and we need a new approach. We are calling on the Government to be brave and ambitious and to take new emergency measures that can actually deliver affordable homes on the scale needed to solve the housing crisis, which is now corroding the very fabric and social cohesion of Irish society. While I thank the one Member of the Government who is here, it is deeply frustrating that the Minister for housing, Deputy Browne, is not here to engage with the Opposition and answer questions. It is an insult to the people of Ireland that the Minister for housing does not attend the Dáil for a debate on the issue for which he is directly responsible.”
“I move: That Dáil Éireann: notes that: - the Taoiseach, Tánaiste and former Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Darragh O'Brien TD, repeatedly promised to deliver 40,000 homes last year but spectacularly failed, with just 30,330 homes delivered; - housing delivery is not just slowing down, it is reducing, with a drop in housing delivery of nearly 7 per cent between 2024 and 2023; - members of the Government have briefed the media that without a dramatic reset of housing policy, there is virtually no chance of reaching their own housing targets; - the Taoiseach has stated this reset will involve "very politically difficult decisions" and said the Government needs to "pivot more strongly to the private sector"; - in an interview on RTÉ radio on 9th February, 2025, the Taoiseach signalled the imminent end of Rent Pressure Zones (RPZs), saying the Government could replace them at the end of this year; - within 24 hours of these remarks being made, the share price of the State's largest private landlord, Irish Residential Real Estate Investment Trust (IRES REIT), soared to its highest level in eight months; - rents are already at record highs, having more than doubled in a decade, and increased by 34 per cent in the lifetime of the last Government; and - 83 per cent of private tenancies in the country are in RPZs; acknowledges that: - a report published last year by the Central Bank of Ireland entitled "Institutional Investment and Residential Rental Market Dynamics", found that 78 per cent of the homes owned by investment funds were bought as existing properties; - the same report found that institutional landlords increase monthly rents by about 4.1 per cent more than other landlords; - since 2021, when the previous Government introduced a 10 per cent stamp duty levy on the bulk purchase of homes, investors have bulk bought half a billion euros worth of residential property; and - in Budget 2025, the Government increased the stamp duty levy, which does not apply to apartments, from 10 per cent to 15 per cent; further notes that: - in 2020, then Minister for Finance, Paschal Donohoe TD, said investment funds were engaging in "aggressive behaviour to avoid tax" and said the Revenue Commissioners were investigating and compiling a report; - the report from the Revenue Commissioners was never published, with the Finance Minister claiming in the Dáil on 13th February, 2025, that "tax compliance issues" had been dealt with via legislation; - however, since 2020, investment funds controlling more than €28 billion worth of Irish property have reduced their tax payments by half, from €74 million to €32 million; - the proportion of new housing available for sale has nearly halved in the last six years; - in Dublin city in 2023, 94 per cent of all new housing was apartments, 98 per cent of which was solely available to rent; and - first time buyers bought just 75 new homes in Dublin City in that year; and calls on Government to: - close loopholes which allow investment funds aggressively avoid tax; - increase the stamp duty levy on the bulk purchase of homes to 100 per cent, and extend it to apartments; - instead of introducing further tax breaks for developers and vulture funds, access European Union streams of finance like InvestEU and the European Regional Development Fund; - introduce a savings scheme like the French Livret A model, to leverage some of the €160 billion in Irish household savings, to invest in affordable housing; - provide increased and early-stage finance to approved housing bodies and local authorities, so they can ramp up the delivery of genuinely affordable homes to rent and buy; and - retain RPZs, until there is an alternate system ready to put in place which can protect renters.”
“Ballymun has a strong proud community that I am honoured to represent but it faces major challenges resulting from decades of State underinvestment and persistent inequalities. Despite national economic growth, between 2016 and 2022, the number of areas in extreme disadvantage in Ballymun actually increased. The Taoiseach visited the area. The State promised to support the Ballymun Implementation Board.”
“We in the Social Democrats set out a clear way to deliver tens of thousands of genuinely affordable homes for sale and rent by the State and the not-for-profit housing bodies leading the development of affordable housing, through reducing the cost of land and finance, directly hiring small builders and providing funding directly, thereby removing the developer profit. We can build affordable homes for sale, like we have seen Ó Cualann do. We also need to develop public sector capacity to directly build homes, increase our construction sector capacity generally by guaranteeing quality employment and develop fast-build factories. We need a new direction. The so-called unpopular decisions the Government wants to make are the ones that will benefit investor funds and developers, rather than protecting renters.”
“It needs to tackle the short-term lets and Airbnbs, a policy to which both parties committed to previously but which is not mentioned in the programme for Government. We do not need the institutional funds. We can fund and build the homes we need by means of a new direction and new policies. There is €150 billion sitting in Irish bank accounts and billions in budget surpluses. The question is: why is the Government restricting the funding we have available in the country to be invested into housing?”
“Representing IRES REIT, Kennedy-Wilson, Urbeo and the big developers Cairn, he had, according to the lobbying register, no less than seven meetings between September and December last year with the Secretaries General of the Departments of housing and An Taoiseach, with the Taoiseach's special adviser and various Ministers, including the Minister for housing. Institutional Property Ireland is the puppet master pulling the housing policy strings. What is needed is an emergency response from the Government, including a three-year freeze on all rents, an immediate halt to the ongoing tsunami of evictions and security for renters through a no-fault eviction ban. The Government needs to ban the funds from buying not just homes but also apartments. It needs to seriously tackle vacancy and dereliction.”
“They claim to be the parties of home ownership, yet under their watch home ownership levels among young people have seen the largest collapse since the foundation of the State. They have turned our younger generations into tenants of the big landlords once again. This time those landlords are US, German and Irish wealth funds. In truth, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are now the parties of the big corporate landlords. This is regulatory capture. They are captured by the funds. The CEO of Institutional Property Ireland, a former chairperson of Fianna Fáil, seems to have taken up residence in Government Buildings.”
“The Government hoodwinked the Irish public during the election campaign with its deception regarding how many homes would be built. Now, rather than accepting that its policies have utterly failed, it is recycling and regurgitating the very policies that caused the crisis in the first place. It is making housing policy not for young people who need a home but for the institutional investors. We rightly call them vulture funds but we should also call them vampire funds because they are feeding off our younger generations into perpetuity, extracting rents from them and locking them out of the possibility of getting a home of their own. It is shocking that we are now in a situation where Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael housing policies have brought us back to the 19th century.”
“It is their policies that are causing this crisis. From Rebuilding Ireland to Housing for All, their focus in housing policy has been to subsidise private developers, bring in investor funds and now they want to bring us back to the future, back to the policies that created the Celtic tiger crash. What an appalling record for Fianna Fáil, namely to have caused two housing disasters within a generation. Last year, the Government delivered a mere 474 affordable purchase homes via local authorities. In 17 counties it did not deliver even one affordable purchase home. In the capital, in Dublin City Council's area, not one affordable purchase home was completed. It is reported today that thousands of affordable cost rental homes are ready to start but the Government will not give housing bodies the funding go-ahead.”
“Between the 500,000 adults stuck living in their childhood box rooms, the 1 million people in the private rental sector, those who are homeless and the tens of thousands in hidden homelessness, just under one third of our entire population is living the housing disaster on a daily basis. It is causing a mental health crisis of stress and anxiety as well as an employment crisis. Schools cannot get teachers, hospitals cannot get nurses, our community disability services cannot get psychologists and therapists and the very tradespeople we need to build the homes are being forced to emigrate because they do not see how they can get a home of their own in this country. It is an emergency and a disaster but not once in the last ten years have Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael treated the housing crisis like the emergency it is and why would they?”
“Has the Government looked at the rents out there? One two-bedroom apartment in Dublin is €3,000 per month while another is €2,600. The entire take-home pay of a nurse would not cover those rents. The Government plans to lift the rent pressure zone caps. What will happen? Rents will rise across the board because of the lack of supply. What will we see then? Housing assistance payments. We will see the use of more public money to support renters who cannot afford the rent, more public money going to US and German pension funds rather than being invested in building affordable housing for our young people. The housing crisis is a social disaster.”
“I thank the Labour Party for tabling this motion. The empty Government benches are indicative of the Government's lack of seriousness in dealing with the housing issue and its lack of willingness to listen to new ideas. This Friday is St. Valentine's Day, and we all know who will be getting the flowers and chocolates from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. The Valentine's card has gone to the investor funds, with a note inside that reads: "We're getting rid of the rent caps for you. Let it rip with the rents." Of course, the share price of IRES REIT jumped on the back of the Taoiseach's recent statements while poor renters and generations stuck at home have been ghosted and gaslit by the Government's failures in housing and its plans to let rents rise again. Renters are panicking about how they will pay for further rent increases.”
“Policy has not been about affordable housing. This is the fundamental problem at the heart of the continued housing policies of the programme for Government that are about subsidising the market, developers and institutional funds. The Taoiseach spoke about there being record State intervention. Yes, there is State invention but it is subsidising those who are profiting from the housing crisis rather than actually building affordable housing. What we need is a new plan that builds genuinely affordable housing through the State and through not-for-profit housing bodies such as the Ó Cualann housing body which is trying to deliver homes in Ballymun but is being blocked by our State. Yesterday, the Taoiseach spoke about ideology and fundamentalism. There is a market fundamentalism on the part of the Government that needs to change.”
“It misled us and the people regarding the housing policy and figures. I call on this House to have questions and answers with the Ministers who made statements to this Dáil that 40,000 homes were being built last year and to provide the evidence of the basis of those statements. This is vital and we are not letting it go because it is about fairy tales about how many homes are actually being built. The reality and the fundamental problem is that the programme for Government is based on that falsehood of how many homes were going to be built. It continues the same policies that failed to deliver the 40,000 homes that were needed. Why are we not seeing a major policy shift? The Government's housing policy did not work. It did not deliver the 40,000 homes about which it misled the public and misled the Dáil.”
“It is important to say that the Central Bank stated in the third quarter of 2024 that there would be only 32,000 homes completed in 2024. The ESRI quarterly commentary in September 2024 stated there was a worrying development in terms of the declining investment in dwellings given the residential housing deficit, while of course the CSO data that was out in October also showed apartments down 7% and single dwellings down 5%. Instead of putting out and relying on the real data and the real evidence, the Government provided these figures that were unreliable and based on figures by vested interests. The Government's housing plans were not working and it tried to cover up the truth about its own housing policy failure. It tried to hoodwink the Irish people and the Dáil itself.”
“I wish the Minister the best of luck. She has a hard job ahead of her, as the entire Government does. Unfortunately, I have to raise again the issue of the 40,000 homes that were not built last year. The truth is that this Government was elected on a false claim, that it had turned the corner on housing and that it was fixing the housing crisis. The question is why it ignored the truth that was presented by independent experts, the State agencies that the entire administration of our State relies on to make decisions, namely, the Central Bank, the State research agency - the ESRI, and the Central Statistics Office. Why were the figures of a German bank and Cairn Homes, one of the biggest developers in this country, the figures that were used to claim how many houses were being built instead of those of the independent and State agencies?”
“It is to be hoped that we will not see a repeat of this and will see emergency responses, a sense of urgency regarding this storm and the other emergencies we face, especially the housing crisis.”
“They have outsourced it to private companies because local authorities do not have the capacity themselves. My question to the Government is when will we develop a properly resourced and properly funded local authority system in this country that actually has the capacity to respond to snow and wind, and to maintain our trees and public infrastructure? This is all part of emergency responses and emergency planning. I again thank the ESB, local authorities and local community organisations that worked so hard to support people and continue to work and support people. I reiterate that this Government failed in its first test of being able to act in its position as the Government.”
“I will give one small example that is very pertinent, which is the issue of trees. Tree maintenance is a responsibility of our local authorities, yet week after week we get complaints from the public about the inadequate maintenance of trees. That is not asking for trees to be chopped down but, rather, asking for them to be pruned and maintained properly. If trees were maintained properly, we could avoid situations such as trees knocking down electricity lines. One constituent sent a photograph to me during the storm of one tree completely lying over and pulling up the pavement. This is a lack of maintenance by local authorities. When we ask them when they will do this maintenance, they give us a huge extended timeline. The issue is they have outsourced it.”
“The other area is the issue of local authorities. This comes under my brief of housing and local government. Local authorities responded. A number of them worked very hard to respond. They set up co-ordination groups and emergency nodes to respond to the storm. As we all know in this House, the issue is that local authorities are completely underfunded. They are stretched in the resources they have. The people in them are working as hard as they can but they lack resources and funding. Why is this? This is again a question. It is the result of decades of underfunding by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael governments, which failed to develop a strong, empowered, local State. Instead, it has been 40 years of privatisation, outsourcing and underfunding of our local authorities.”
“In particular, why is it not being done in places that are more vulnerable to storms so that in future people will have their own independent electricity supply, which does not rely on having a car that might plug in? The provision of renewable energy in homes is an area that the Government has acknowledged is a win-win. It provides cheaper electricity. It also enables homes to reduce their carbon emissions. The problem is only some people can afford to invest in renewable energy and in solar panels on their homes. Most people cannot do so. They do not have any money to put into investment in their homes. We can see this in the cost-of-living crisis. Where is the expediting of the roll-out of solar panels on everybody's home? Where will the State ensure that everybody can access renewable energy?”
“My question for the Government is where is the preparation for the next storm. We have had snow and wind. What preparation is in place so that we are not scrambling as we were in the response to this storm in all the areas? Short- and long-term measures are required. One medium-term measure, although it could also be taken in the short term, is the way in which we could support people to be resilient when these emergency storms happen. One area is the roll-out of renewable energy on an individual basis for a house or apartment block on a block-by-block basis. We know that there are ways in which solar energy and solar panels can be supported to provide electricity to an individual home. The question is why this is not being done more.”
“I think the Government was distracted in its response by the mess it created in its stroke with its new partners in the regional Independents and trying to cover up that storm instead of actually responding to the real storm that needed an emergency response. Vulnerable people I know in the west of Ireland who were supposed to be contacted by the HSE were not contacted. We need better responses from our State. We also need to acknowledge that this is climate change and this is the climate emergency. Storm Éowyn broke wind speed records. The highest wind speeds since records began were recorded in County Galway. The figures out today from the European Union's climate research agency show that January was the warmest month globally. Global warming increases the likelihood and intensity of extreme weather events.”
“Clearly, this was not on the scale of what happened in rural counties but significant distress was experienced. Local residents' associations, such as the Wadelai-Hillcrest and District Residents Association, provided great support. People also contacted me. It is important we come back again to the point regarding the Government seriously acknowledging that its response was really a botched one to this absolute emergency. The Government needs to plan better. Indeed, its own Minister agreed to this on RTÉ last week when it was said the Government does need to plan better and it should have had the emergency hubs in place long before this storm.”
“I thank the ESB, councils, communities and individuals for the work they have done and the support they have shown to each other. Again, as we saw during Covid, ordinary people and communities in this country showed the way forward while the Government followed behind, very delayed and inadequately. The Government failed to take a serious emergency response to this storm, just like it failed to take an emergency response to the housing crisis. It is important to highlight that it was not just in rural areas that people lost their electricity. People in Glasnevin and Santry in my constituency, including vulnerable adults and families, were without power where trees fell on electricity lines and caused power outages for several days.”
“Why are we allowing our airspace still to be used to transit munitions that are being used by the Israeli army? We have to rebuild our common humanity and make real our obligations and responsibilities under international human rights law and agreements. I call on the Government not to do a U-turn, not to abandon its electoral commitments, and to enact the occupied territories Bill.”
“Let there be no mistake about it: our common humanity and the international human rights rule of law lie broken and buried beneath the rubble of Gaza. Tens of thousands of children, women and men were massacred by the Israeli Government - children bombed while playing with their toys, bombed while crying in their parents' arms. Each of the 62,000 people killed had their own story and their own life. As the poet and academic, Refaat Alareer, wrote, who was killed: If I must die, you must live to tell my story Each of the 2 million people who are trying to rebuild their lives in Gaza has their own right to live their story, as do the entire people of the West Bank. The question for Ireland is: why we are not showing true acts of solidarity that we can achieve such as enacting this Bill?”
“I commend the tireless work of people across this country in the Palestine solidarity movement and the many groups that have held vigils, protests and fund-raisers for Palestine. Their genuine and active solidarity stands in contrast to Governments that dithered, delayed and now are abandoning the implementation of the occupied territories Bill. This Bill is an important act of solidarity and meaningful action that the people of Gaza and the West Bank really need right now. It has been the action of the Irish public that has pushed the Government into taking actions like recognising the State of Palestine. That public will continue their campaign until the occupied territories Bill is enacted in full. We in the Social Democrats completely support them.”