YOU ARE SPOOFING, TAOISEACH! - Deputy Mary Lou McDonald- speech from 19 Mar 2025

Welcome to Leaders' Questions, where Ireland's leaders face the heat, the pressure, and the toughest questions of the day. During the general election campaign, you, along with Tanaiste, Simon Harris, and your ministers, repeatedly claimed that 40,000 homes would be delivered in 2024. This was a ploy to fool people into believing that you had made real progress in housing. Of course, we all knew it was bull. We now know that 30,330 homes were in fact delivered in 2024. That's less than the previous year, and far short of your 40,000 election brag. A failure, by the way, that's set to continue as the central bank says government will miss your housing targets for the next three years. So, you and your colleagues cynically misled the public on the key issue of housing during the general election. When this ploy was exposed last month, your defence was that the claim of 40,000 homes in 2024 wasn't a promise, that it was a forecast that ended up being wrong. In other words, an honest mistake. But now we have the truth. The government knew in advance of the general election that you hadn't a hope of hitting 40,000 new homes for 2024. Just days before the general election was called, then Finance Minister and Fianna Fáil Deputy Leader Jack Chambers was handed an important report by the Department of Finance and that report laid out in black and white that 40,000 homes would not be delivered. Now, Taoiseach, nobody could seriously believe that the Minister would have kept that information from government on the eve of an election. It was too important. So, I assume he shared it with you. What I know is that Minister Chambers did not tell the public. On the contrary, two days after receiving this report, with the general election underway, he made the claim that the government was on course to deliver 40,000 homes. And this untruth was repeated by you, by Simon Harris, by Dara O'Brien, again and again throughout the campaign. It is not lost on anyone, Taoiseach, that last week, as Minister Chambers was caught out for misleading the public at home, you were sitting in the Oval Office laughing about Ireland's housing crisis. The American President stated that the housing crisis is because Ireland is doing so well, that it is a good problem. You replied, that is a pretty good answer, Mr President. Well, Taoiseach, do you think it is a pretty good answer for people locked out of home ownership, for renters crucified with rip-off rents, for young people unable to get a start in life, choosing between staying at home with their parents or going to Australia? Do you think it is a good answer for mothers and fathers forced into homelessness for children being raised in B&Bs and in hotel rooms? Your sniggering interaction hurt a lot of people, Taoiseach. You made light of their suffering. So, government misleads people on housing at home and then laughs at them, while rubbing shoulders with the powerful abroad. It is a good answer for people, it is a good answer for people, and it is a good answer for people, it is a good answer for people, and it is a good answer for people. But now, it is a good answer for people. So Taoiseach, do you recognise the hurt caused by your laughing with the American President about the Irish housing crisis? And will you now accept, will you now admit, that you knowingly misled the public with your claim that the government would deliver 40,000 homes in 2024? Well, our two-spair on the Aean team in Aecher, let's an Hachta as Hachtan Meda-Doorchi. Nélein Ores, ach an Averis Taachtí, agus as Praineach, sa Tírsao, no a Corsi Tithiochta, agus an Príf Aeimata Gwynh Már Ríltais na, níis mód teith a'chrachú, agus e siin a ieneb, chó tapig is Feidrlaing. Siin bannagos bár, palas a'he an Ríltais sió. Coil I get to first, in the first instance say, that housing is the number one issue in this country. In the White House, in the Oval Office, I made the following comment. I said the number one issue in Ireland is housing. We have got to build more houses. We have got to build them faster to give the young people of Ireland an opportunity to buy a house or to afford to rent a house. It is a pity, Deputy, you did not quote that in respect of how I addressed the housing issue in a serious and substantive way when I was asked the question during the press conference in the Oval Office. And I have consistently said, during the last government and in this government, that this is the number one issue. You will choose to play politics with it on an ongoing basis. You choose not to go to Washington. A big mistake in my view. You choose not to face, meet people, to discuss a whole range of issues that you will habitually raise in this house. But you have not the courage or guts to go to the US and meet your own interlocutors and discuss those issues with them. But on the housing issue, if I could, for a moment, there were a number of projections throughout 2020 in respect of completions. Now, we have exceeded targets, and particularly in 2022 and 2023, we exceeded central bank targets. We exceeded other targets who felt we would come in lower. That is the position. The first quarter of the following year is when the statistics come in. And there are a variety of publications. And data was published in September by central bank and others. But the central bank had come in lower in previous years. You know from EY Euroconstruct and others were predicting far higher numbers. It was extremely disappointing that we didn't make those targets in 2024. The overall housing for all targets were exceeded in that three-year period. But that is not enough. We have to build more houses and we have to build them faster. And the focus has to be on how we do that. And how we get from 30,000-plus houses a year to 50,000 houses a year. And I have yet to hear anything credible from you in respect of that challenge. And when people make suggestions, as I have, in terms of the need for more private sector investment into housing in this country, it gets attacked in a knee-jerk fashion without any space or room for a meaningful or substantive debate on the issues or the modalities by which we get 50,000 houses built a year. Because that is what the ESRI is saying, that we need in terms of demographic pressures, in other words, population is increasing, and more and more houses will need to be built. All the parties in this House agree on the demand side of the targets. In other words, I don't need this big disagreement as to whether it is 50,000 or a variation of that that we require per annum over the next five years. We have a very clear programme in terms of government investment, which is the largest historically. We have built more houses in the last three years than going back to the early 2000s. We have built more social housing in the last three years than in the 1970s. You would have to go back to the 1970s to get the same scale of social housing new builds in this country as well as provision. We are going to continue to focus on that in terms of the delivery of social housing, affordable housing, and we do need to get more private sector investment. The Department of Finance analysed all of the available data that you have cited there and more. The Department of Finance told your colleague, Minister Jack Chambers, that 40,000 homes in 2024 was not happening. And we have the documentation to reflect that fact. So Minister Chambers knew. Government knew. I assume you knew Taoiseach. And yet you went and spun the fiction again and again and again of 40,000 houses in 2024. To, as it were, take the bad look off things. Shame on you for doing that, for misleading people. And Taoiseach, it does not take courage to snigger at people. That to me is the action of an obsequious coward, in fact. That is a cowardly act. To snigger at the suffering and the hardship of people back home, when you feel you are at a safe distance to do so. So I would ask you to reflect on that. And reflect on the fact that your sniggering caused real hurt. I think you should genuinely reflect on that fact. Maybe you have not. I would now ask you to do so. And to accept also that you misled people in the general election campaign. I think that is pathetic. You accuse me of spoofing. I mean, get off the stage. Come off the stage. No one is sniggering at any housing problem. You know that. You know that. It is pathetic. The protestations and your attempt to exploit that particular moment. And completely oblivious and refusing to reference the actual substance in terms of what I said in relation to housing being the number one priority in Ireland. Whatever you do, Deputy, you can criticise my policies or our policies as a government. But don't be trying to say you have a monopoly of concern or empathy on the housing question. Everybody in this house knows it. Knows it through their own communities, through the people we represent, that it is the number one issue. No one is going to buy into your propaganda, your feigned outrage and feigned protestation. The bottom line is you did not go to Capitol Hill, even though in other years you will ask us to advocate on your behalf. That is the government of the day, which we did on many occasions for Sinn Féin. But when it comes to putting the party first, as opposed to the country first, Sinn Féin will always put the party first. Thank you. And that's why you didn't go. That's why you didn't go to the U.S. On spurious throngs you didn't go to the U.S. And no one is convinced about your false assertions. Deputy, thank you, please. Like, share, and subscribe, and let us know your thoughts in the comments. We'd love to hear from you.