New measures to boost housing supply have been dismissed by Opposition parties as minor tweaks to a failing policy.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar rejected the charges made by Sinn Féin and Labour as he insisted the Housing for All strategy was working.
During robust exchanges at Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil, Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald and Labour leader Ivana Bacik accused the Government of failing to take decisive action to address the housing crisis.
Their claims came after Cabinet signed off on three moves designed to boost supply.
The Government is to scrap development levies for 12 months to encourage more home building; increase grants available to renovate vacant and derelict properties; and provide more support for the provision of apartments and homes under the cost-rental model.
Ms McDonald said the housing crisis had lasted for more than a decade.
“It’s a social catastrophe driven by the political choices made by Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil in that time,” she said.
“The situation is especially acute for our young people, for public services and for business. And it’s crystal clear that government doesn’t appreciate the scale of the challenge. What’s needed is a major step change from government to deal with the crisis. The measures you announced today see Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil continue to tinker around the edges of this emergency.”
She challenged the state to intervene directly to build more public homes.
“What we need is for government to initiate a massive scaling up of affordable and social housing,” said the Sinn Féin leader.
“What we get is government scrambling about clutching at straws trying to save a failed housing plan, doubling down on failure.”
Mr Varadkar said the Housing for All strategy has had a “really good start”.
“At the moment we’re seeing about 300 to 400 people buying their first home every week, that’s the highest number since the Celtic Tiger period,” he said.
“And that gives me a lot of hope, a lot of confidence in the future that we’re going to be able to turn the tide on homeownership – 30,000 new homes were built last year.”
He added: “We are building public housing. We built more social housing last year than any year since the 1970s. More than Sinn Fein has ever built in Northern Ireland. We’re going to build more again this year. And that’s our commitment.”
Mr Varadkar characterised Sinn Féin’s position as “totally vacuous and empty” as he claimed the party had no housing strategy other than to demand a change of government.
Ms Bacik accused the Government of “throwing good money after bad”.
“Taoiseach, this country is facing a housing disaster of epic proportions,” she said.
“A shortage of homes that is exacerbating generational divides, exacerbating inequality, affecting health outcomes, affecting our education system, stifling job growth, and today you’re casting yet more money into yet another package of additional measures on housing, which you say will deliver results, but which represents the latest in a series of desperate efforts to kick some life into your housing policy.
“It’s yet another attempt to tweak the Housing for All policy which you have to accept is failing. This indeed is a tacit acceptance that Housing for All is failing, that it hasn’t delivered results, that this government, your government Taoiseach, is out of its depth, that you lack ambition, you lack urgency and crucially you’ve lacked any impact on the housing disaster.”
Mr Varadkar again defended the Government’s record on housing as he accused Opposition parties of peddling a narrative that failed to acknowledge the importance of private home development.
“It’s not about public versus private, people who want to buy their home against people who are in social housing,” he said.
“If we’re going to solve the housing crisis, we need to maximise the amount of public housing we build and we also need to maximise the amount of private housing we build. It’s not an either/or.”
He added: “It’s not what the Opposition thinks – public versus private, pitting people who want to buy their home against people on the housing list.
“We need to help everyone, it’s Housing for All, it’s public and private, as much as we can possibly do on both tracks.”
