Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Aontú) | Oireachtas source

I had a debate with the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Deputy McConalogue, on a radio station over the weekend, during which he stated that the housing crisis could not be fixed overnight. It is an incredible statement for a Minister to make at this stage. Since Phil Hogan and Deputy Alan Kelly were Ministers, through to the Minister, Deputy Coveney, Eoghan Murphy and the current Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, Ministers all said that the housing crisis could not be fixed overnight. It is a long night for the people on housing waiting lists, those in homelessness and those on the edge of survival because of increasing rents.

All that time the crisis has got steadily worse. We now have record numbers of people who are homeless, hitting 10,800 people accessing emergency accommodation, 3,220 of whom are children, in just the last month. Does the Minister have any idea of the long-term damage it does to children to be homeless or living in emergency accommodation - the damage it does to their health, their mental health, their nutrition and their education? This is the Government damaging a generation of children due to its policies on housing.

Every year, approximately 100 people die of homelessness on the streets of Dublin. The Government is not recording the number of people dying in any other county. Dozens of other people are losing their lives in homelessness in the rest of the country and no State organisation sees fit even to record that number. Many thousands of people are one rent increase away from poverty or homelessness. This is absolutely a record-breaking Government: the highest house prices on record, the highest rents on record and, now, the highest number of homeless people on record.

In the jaws of this emergency, this national humanitarian crisis, one would imagine the Government would have an urgency about it in respect of solutions in the budget it has just delivered, but that has not happened, unfortunately. A promised vacant home tax plan, which was incredibly nebulous, was based on a house having to be occupied less than 30 days a year. What are people going to do? Are they going to take selfies in those homes for 31 days of the year? Are they going to go to the local Garda station to sign on for 31 days of the year? It is an incredible situation. I heard two Fine Gael Deputies talk about how it is absolutely wrong that there are so many vacant homes in this State. Let us be absolutely clear, however: Fine Gael has been opposing vacant home taxes since the start of this Government. The Minister, Deputy Donohoe, is ideologically opposed to the imposition of vacant home taxes and has said so and acted as such many times in his position as Minister for Finance.

The residential zoned land tax announced in last year's budget is still in the future tense. Long-term empty homes and empty sites in a crisis of this depth is a clear winner in the crowded race of Government ineptitude in respect of housing. I say "crowded race" because the Government's actions in terms of ineptitude are incredible. The Government closed building sites for a full quarter in 2021. The country with the worst housing crisis in the whole of the European Union was the only country in the whole of the European Union that closed building sites. It is incredible. In an act of sheer ignorance and illiteracy, the Government has now decided to introduce a defective concrete products levy on products going into the building of houses. What is wrong with the Government that it is starting to increase the taxes levied on building homes for people in the jaws of the worst housing crisis in the history of the State? I and the majority of people in this country have no confidence in this Government's ability to fix the housing crisis.

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