Delivery of new apartments fell by nearly one quarter last year and completions for this year are expected to fall another 25%. It is no surprise. In the budget the Minister slashed tax for private developers but he did nothing to tackle land speculation, even as land hoarding runs rampant. In the greater Dublin area alone figures show that almost 41,000 permissions for apartments lie dormant. They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, yet the Minister did the same thing last year and the year before. In Fianna Fáil they just cannot help themselves. They keep chasing the private developer model even when presented with all the evidence that it does not work. Far from cutting costs or delivering more homes, the Government's VAT cut is simply being absorbed by developers. It is a benefit for the private sector and there is no evidence it will address what the Minister, Deputy Chambers, has just called that "viability gap". It is a direct wealth transfer from a society locked out of affordable housing into the pockets of those shutting them out. It is an incoherent and contradictory policy. The Minister must fancy his chances at the FIFA prize for housing if that should ever come to pass. If the budget primed the locked-out generation for disappointment, the Government's housing plan has pushed them over the edge. We have seen no action on the land speculation, which is delaying delivery, and the reality of land speculation delaying delivery. We see nothing to support small developers who want to help deal with the crisis. There is no move to transform the Land Development Agency into a State construction company that is capable of delivering homes at scale. The Government's strategic housing activation office, so-called, still has no one individual person at the helm. It is tsarless and directionless. We have no idea what it will do yet and after 11 months of waiting the Government's plan looks more like what they call "busy work", rather than a blueprint for change. All the trends are going in the wrong direction. Despite the litany of measures the Minister has just articulated, the reality is that having wrongly overstated the housing figures last year under then Minister for housing, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, the Government will miss its building targets again this year. Construction activity has declined for the seventh month in a row. The number of children in homelessness is, shockingly, climbing towards the 5,500 mark. In a move that is beyond satire, the State is even funding the excellent SpunOut organisation to advise young people by video on how to cope with the move back to their parents' house when it is the Government that has priced them out of the rental and purchase markets. It would be comical if it was not so serious, with 80% of the population priced out of renting and 60% not being able to afford to buy a house on their salary. It is clear that the Government's policies are simply not achieving for people. We have seen it with the help-to-buy scheme and the first home scheme. When will the Minister finally accept that his Government's policies are failing? When will we see the radical reset of housing policy that the Housing Commission sought and that aspiring homeowners and aspiring home renters throughout the country so desperately need?
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It is not-----
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That is not true.
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Unfortunately, anyone listening will realise that, of course, we in opposition put forward reasonable, costed constructive proposals. Indeed, the Labour Party supported the Land Development Agency. We support the tenant in situ scheme. We support measures that are proven to assist people who wish to be able to buy or rent their own homes - the generation that has been locked out of home ownership or even home rental. What the Minister tends to do in government is focus on what the Opposition has not done. He never acknowledges that we have put forward sustainable costed alternatives to his failed measures. The Government's measures have patently failed. Among the constructive proposals that we put forward are to look at other countries. Let us look at other countries that have models that work. In Vienna, 40% of the rental stock is owned by limited-profit housing associations. Low-, high- and middle-income earners there all have access to stable long-term homes. There are long-term fixed-interest loans providing financial stability to those who wish to have a home of their own. In Ireland, as the Minister keeps saying to us, the issue is not money but how it is spent.
Sentiment score: 0.08
The Government is choosing to spend it in the wrong way. Of course, there is space for the private market but the Government absolutely neglects the huge role the State could and should be playing to ensure people can get a home.
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It is the wrong way, subsidising developers.
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This manifests-----
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A second round.
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