Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I return to the issue of housing. It is the single biggest issue we all hear about every day across every constituency and community. It is at the root of so many problems holding back our country and people. The Minister and his Government colleagues are well aware of this. There is the exodus of nurses, midwives and doctors from our shores, which was one of the issues debated in a Labour Private Members' motion yesterday; teacher shortages, with half of our schools understaffed this year, which I raised with the Taoiseach yesterday; and the misery of homelessness, people evicted onto our streets and rising numbers of people, families and children in emergency accommodation. All of this is due to the housing crisis.

Threshold reports today a 17.5% increase in the number of households seeking its assistance compared to last year. The Minister is in office more than four years. His Housing for All plan has been in place for three, but by any objective standards - just looking at this calmly and rationally without trading insults across the floor - the plan has failed. Rents, evictions and house prices are up and, most worryingly, the number of people in homelessness is up. Tomorrow we will learn how many people are homeless in the updated official figures.

Here is how the Minister could and should have spent the past four years: giving renters legal protections by passing our renters rights Bill; protecting children from homelessness, on which Labour put forward the Housing (Homeless Families) Bill; and, crucially, increasing building targets and building more homes. The single biggest impact he could have had is through the construction of more social and affordable homes. Building such homes takes adults out of childhood bedrooms, families out of emergency accommodation and renters out of an overcrowded and overheated private rented sector.

The problem is that housing targets are a fiction. Last year we put it to the Minister that at least 50,000 new builds would be needed each year to meet demand. Some of his colleagues scoffed at that at the time but the Minister has now admitted Housing for All targets are too low to meet the real level of need. The Tánaiste has admitted this, as have the Taoiseach and his predecessor, Deputy Varadkar.

Despite the fact the Minister consistently falls short of his own inadequate social and affordable targets, he continues to boast of exceeding overall objectives. He did it on Tuesday during oral questions on housing and just now he made reference to the quarter 3 output figures and said completions are likely to be in the late 30,000s or early 40,000s units this year. We welcome that and any increase in delivery of housing. Everyone in opposition and government should do that, but we have to acknowledge, as does the Minister, that that is still not enough. The level of need is far greater. Every objective body from the CSO to housing and construction experts tell us this, so it is ridiculous to be self-congratulatory on meeting targets when the dogs in the street know the targets are too low.

I have been asking the Minister for years when we will increase the targets, as have others. Each time he says revised targets are on the way. We are approaching the end of October. Can the Minister say whether the revised building targets will be out in the next two weeks or will we have to wait until the next Dáil term?

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