Taoiseach ‘painfully out of touch with reality’ on housing - McDonald

The Government’s housing target of 24,600 house completions this year will be surpassed, Taoiseach Micheál Martin has said, as he accused Sinn Féin of playing a “populist game” on the issue.

During sharp exchanges with the Sinn Féin leader in the Dáil on Wednesday, Mr Martin said that the Government’s housing plan “was working”, and that Mary Lou McDonald was “not going to put words in my mouth” when pressed over how the challenge should be described.

Speaking during Leaders’ Questions, Ms McDonald said that, during a debate between Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien and her party’s housing spokesperson Eoin Ó Broin on Virgin Media TV on Tuesday night, the Minister had “claimed that we do not have a housing emergency”. This was “incredible”, she added.

The Dublin Central TD read out testimonies of “some of the hundreds of people” who had been in touch with her party over the last 24 hours, describing them as “victims of the housing emergency”.

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She said there was a father close to tears every day, a mother on medication to cope with the stress, young people feeling depressed and looking to emigrate, children racked with anxiety and fear and families living in a state of panic.

“The claim made that this isn’t a housing emergency is so painfully out of touch with reality because Taoiseach, if this isn’t a disaster, then what is it?” Ms McDonald said.

“If this isn’t a social catastrophe, then what is it, and if this isn’t a housing emergency, as you claim, well then what is it?”

The Sinn Féin leader asked the Taoiseach did he accept that the State was living through a housing emergency, adding: “Because if like your Minister you do not, that goes a very long way to explain your abject failure in meeting the housing needs of people.”

Ms McDonald said the “reality” of the Taoiseach’s record was “highest rents, highest house prices, highest levels of homelessness”.

In response, Mr Martin said he was “not going to play your populist game” and that Sinn Féin was “essentially” populist in its approach to issues.

Mr Martin said he had been consistent in saying that housing was the “single most urgent and important social issue facing our society at this moment in time”.

“You’re not going to put words in my mouth,” he said. Ms McDonald responded across the Dáil chamber: “You’re not going to put roofs over people’s heads.”

The Taoiseach said “a lot has been done” over the last two and a half years, notwithstanding the lockdowns during the Covid-19 pandemic, “of which there were two, which did have an impact, coming out of that into the war in Ukraine and the inflationary cycle, which really increased building material costs”.

He said the latest home completion data from the CSO showed the country was “well on track” in exceeding the Housing for All housing plan for 2022.

“We will go over 24,600 towards the end of this year,” he said. “There was 28,000 homes built in the 12 months to September 2022, 21,000 house completions in the first nine months of this year.”

Mr Martin said the housing plan “was working”, but that more houses needed to be built and “more quickly”.

“There were more than 16,000 first-time buyers in the past 12 months, that’s the highest in a long time, since 2007,” he added. “That represents 33 per cent of all house purchases.”