Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

On behalf of People Before Profit, I extend my solidarity and support to the families of the 48 who never came home from the Artane fire in 1981. I hope that today is the day they finally get the truth and justice they deserve after their 40-year long struggle.

Next Tuesday at 5.30 p.m. outside the Dáil, the Raise the Roof campaign will hold a major rally demanding secure and affordable housing for all. The coalition of trade unions, housing groups, political parties and student unions will put forward a motion in Private Members' time on the same day calling for the Government to acknowledge its failure to address the unprecedented housing and homelessness crisis and demanding that it finally deliver the social and affordable housing we need, control rents to put them in line with the incomes of ordinary workers, deal with the scandal of vacant and derelict property, reinstate the no-fault fiction ban and deliver genuine affordability, which would give ordinary young and working people some hope of getting a secure and affordable roof over their head. The rally comes on the back of this Government's utter failure to deliver secure and affordable housing for working people and a whole generation of young people, meet even its own completely inadequate affordable housing targets, which it missed by 1,191, and meet its social and affordable housing targets.

In Dublin, the average house price has now reached €511,000 and the average monthly rent has reached €2,344 in the private sector. The latest Central Statistics Office figures show that in the past 12 months those already unaffordable house prices have gone up by another 6% and those already unaffordable rents have gone up by 10%.

The Government says that we do not offer solutions but the solutions it is proposing are going to make matters worse. It plans to extend a suspension of development levies to throw another €300 million at the developers who are delivering completely unaffordable housing and completely unaffordable rents. In contrast, on Committee Stage of the Planning Development Bill 2023 yesterday, we proposed an amendment to increase the amount of social and affordable housing from 20% to 50% but the Government rejected it. It also rejects the proposals being put forward by the Raise the Roof campaign, housing groups, ICTU and many of the Opposition political parties. What does the Tánaiste have to say to those who will gather outside the Dáil next week to protest at the Government's failure to deliver the social and affordable housing the people of this country so desperately need?

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