Sinn Féin to bring forward Dáil motion declaring housing emergency

Sinn Féin plans to bring forward a motion in the Dáil this week declaring a housing emergency in the State.

The party’s housing spokesman Eoin Ó Broin said he would use the party’s private member’s time in the Dáil to propose the motion.

He described a response from Minister for Housing Darragh O’Brien in a recent media debate that he did not believe there was a housing emergency as “shocking” and said that it exposed “how out of touch this Government is.’

“Minister O’Brien has been in post for over two years and the housing crisis has only worsened on his watch. Rents are continuing to spiral, house prices continue to soar and there are record levels of homelessness,” said Mr Ó Broin.

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“This Government has shown time and time again that it is incapable of getting to grips with the housing crisis. In the meantime, ordinary people across the State pay the price.”

Mr Ó Broin said that “whole generations” were “locked out of home ownership, paying sky high rents while house prices soar and the dream of home ownership slips further out of reach”.

“Thousands of children will go to sleep tonight in emergency accommodation – an appalling situation which must never be normalised,” he said.

The Sinn Féin TD said it was “time for the minister to do his job and accept the reality of the crisis he is overseeing”.

In a media debate on Virgin Media’s The Tonight Show earlier this month, Mr O’Brien said that there was “no question” that there was “a crisis” in housing but rejected the view that there was an emergency in the overall housing sector.

“For many people, it is an emergency,” he said referring to people in homelessness.

More than 10,800 were accessing emergency accommodation in September as the number of people living in homeless rose above 10,000 earlier this year for the first time since the pandemic.

Mr O’Brien has said the Government would significantly exceed a target of 24,600 new homes, both public and private, to be built this year but acknowledged that, within that total number, it may not reach the target of 9,000 newly built social homes.

Tánaiste Leo Varadkar admitted this weekend that Government targets for home building next year “are at risk” and that delivering more than 30,000 homes under the Housing for All plan in 2023 was “going to be a challenge.”

Mr Ó Broin urged the public to support the Raise The Roof rally next Saturday in Dublin city centre “to make your voice heard about how the housing crisis is affecting you.’