Deputy Mary Lou McDonald - speech from 3 Dec 2019

Welcome this motion. It is not populist. It's not designed to bring down the government either in force a Christmas election. It's to focus our collective minds and efforts on the issue of housing. Now you'd never think to listen to our esteemed colleague from Fianna Fáil that he actually will sit on his hands later and allow the chancers and the hoodwinkers from Fine Gael, his partners in government, to have their way again. with housing policy. The instinct of government, and by that to be absolutely clear, I mean not just Fine Gael but Fianna Fáil also, has been to circle the wagons when it comes to housing. To learn off speaking notes, to engage in spin and to essentially send a message to the public that they don't matter. And those of us who offer solutions that will make a real and a substantial difference and put a roof over people's heads, where we're routinely ignored, abused, disregarded. Because for this government and for the political establishment more generally, you see, power trumps people every single time. And in their greed for political power, Fine Gael, it seems, is absolutely blind to the very real consequences of their policy failures. For their part, Fianna Fáil engage in shadow boxing, they make a whole pile of noise, as you've just heard, but when push comes to shove, they'll come in here, sit on their hands and support their buddies in Fine Gael. They back this government to the hilt. In fact, in reality, they are part of this government. And with his abstention here today, Micheál Martin and Fianna Fáil show very clearly whose side they're on. They're on the side of landlords. They're on the side of property speculators. And they're on that side at the expense of homeless children and struggling workers and families. And it's that attitude that truly sums up just how out of touch all of you in government are. Earlier, I asked the Taoiseach if he would accept that his minister's housing policies have failed. Faced with the evidence of rents reaching highs of €2,000 per month, of years spent on waiting lists for a council house, of children who will now wait for Santa Claus in B&Bs and family hubs, and over 10,500 people homeless. The best, the very best that Taoiseach could offer was spin, deflection and an appalling inability to admit and to accept that on this one, he, his minister and his government have got it wrong. So let's use tonight's motion as an opportunity. Let's start from scratch. Let's ditch the spin. And let's take this motion as an opportunity to get things right. So firstly, Minister, you have to go. That's the long and the short of it. Your Rebuilding Ireland policy is now in its fourth year and it's simply not delivering. In fact, the problem has gotten worse. Figures released tonight show over 10,500 people are now homeless. You are incapable of dealing with this crisis and you have demonstrated that time and again. You see, we can't keep coming in here day and daily recounting the suffering of our people. And your time, Minister, has run out. And we then need to set in motion a radical plan of home building, both in respect of council housing and affordable homes to buy and rent. And by affordable, I mean actually affordable to ordinary people. Sinn Féin has a plan. Our plan is for a public housing programme that will be the biggest that this state has ever seen. It has to be at a pace and a rate that will meet current need and demand, pent-up demand and future demographic trends. Building social and affordable housing is the only long-term policy solution that can address this crisis. And it can be done. In the short term, we have to tackle sky-high rents. We have a plan that would reduce rents by 1,500 euro per year for renters by using a rent freeze and tax credit for renters. And that's the kind of targeted action that we need. Not spin and bull, but targeted concrete actions to help people. We need to introduce my colleague Piers Doherty's No Consent No Sale bill to empower ordinary people against circling vulture funds. Let's do that. That would help. And we must introduce a redress scheme for homeowners living in defective Celtic Tiger properties. We have to increase investment in local authority housing for retrofitting to ensure sustainability of our housing stock. Now, these are common sense things that can work. But more so than anything else, we have to face up to the fact that doing nothing or doing the same things all over again is simply not good enough. It's not good enough to keep spinning. It's not good enough to continue with business as usual. The solutions are there. The only thing now standing in our way is political will. So I ask the House not to squander this opportunity because people are struggling. Real people are struggling. And now is the time to stand up for them and to make a difference. The House not to draw a difference. The House not to draw a letter. We have to make a difference.