Conor Sheehan

The Taoiseach is very selective.

2. Deputy Conor Sheehan asked the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage to confirm if he intends to review the housing completion target for 2025; the number of new homes his Department estimates will now be completed in 2025; the additional measures he plans to take to increase housing construction; the engagement he has had with the Department of Finance and Department of Public Ex…

Will the Minister confirm whether he intends to review the housing completion target for 2025, how many new homes does his Department estimate will be completed in 2025, what additional measures does he plan to take to increase housing construction, and what engagement has he had with the Departments of Finance and public expenditure on new taxation and expenditure measures to boost delivery?

Regarding targets, there has been a great deal in the news in the past of couple of months, including yesterday, to show that the Government will not reach its stated targets for the next three years. We have 250,000 too few homes for the population and the Housing Commission report is very clear. How does the Minister intend to make sure we reach the housing targets as set out in the programme f…

I did not hear anything specific in the Minister's reply in regard to what the Government is actually going to do to get us out of this quagmire we are in. I want to follow that up by asking about apartment delivery. We have a specific issue with apartments. It was revealed this morning in The Irish Times that the croí cónaithe city scheme had only delivered 17% of its target. It has delivered not…

We still have not had a proper rationale as to why the Minister has decided to curtail this scheme. Now that single people are excluded from it, and we know single people are not moving on the housing list at the speed we would like due to the shortage of available units, can the Minister outline what new measures the Government will be bringing forward to stop them from entering homelessness and …

I welcome our visitors to the Public Gallery. I thank the Minister of State for his comprehensive response. It would be remiss of me to speak about young carers without acknowledging our 2024 Limerick Person of the Year, Ellen Gannon from Newcastle West who cares for her two brothers, nine-year-old twins Andrew and James, both of whom are autistic. Today we heard very powerful testimony from four …

Almost ten years.

Hear, hear.

Gabhaim buíochas leis an gCathaoirleach Gníomhach. Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas, ar dtús báire, a ghabháil le Páirtí Shinn Féin as an rún seo a thabhairt faoi bhráid na Dála. Molaim agus molann Páirtí an Lucht Oibre an rún seo. The Government's announcement on the tenant in situ scheme leaves more questions than answers. This is a vital scheme to stop even more people ending up in homelessness. Th…

I very much welcome this debate, which is long overdue. I also welcome the Deputy Browne to his new role as Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage. I wish him well. We should have had this debate months ago, before the election. The Housing Commission's report is as clear as it is stark in relation to the Government's failure on housing. It is abundantly clear that we do need a perio…

I thank Deputy Coppinger and her group for bringing forward this important motion. I welcome the survivors are in the Public Gallery. They should not need to come here to see this issue addressed. I pay particular tribute to Natasha O'Brien, one of my constituents, for her advocacy in relation to this work. As a man, I am very conscious of the fact that we are the problem because we are the perpe…

I add my congratulations to the concerto of congratulations. I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Butler, for coming to the House this evening. I am sorry to subject the Minister of State to this at this ungodly hour but let it never be said that she does not work hard. I rise tonight to raise the issue of the lack of a consistent and permanent full-time speech and language therapist, SLT, at Ki…

I thank the Minister of State for her reply and I welcome it. The community needs complete certainty as to when exactly this post will be filled because there has been a lack of faith here because the post has been vacant, as I have outlined, for more than three years. It is very clear that the HSE's pay and numbers strategy is not working. Officials in the HSE have told me that they were severely…

Hear, hear.

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. It is very disappointing, yet again, that we do not have even a Minister of State from the Department of housing. I tabled a housing motion in the Dáil last week with my Labour Party colleagues. The Minister for housing was, unfortunately, not available last week and did not even have the courtesy to contact me or my colleague, Deputy Bacik, to say he …

We showed up.

I move: That Dáil Éireann: recalls that: — under Housing for All - A new Housing Plan for Ireland, the failed housing plan of the last Government, a target of 33,450 new homes were projected for 2024 but only 30,030 homes were built, a decrease of 6.7 per cent on 2023, while the construction of new apartments fell by almost a quarter; — the former Minister for Housing, Local Government and Her…

-----throughout this debate to hear this motion. That is very disappointing and if it is a sign of things to come, it is not a way to start off this Dáil term. Nevertheless, I am delighted to move this motion, the Labour Party’s first Private Members' motion of the Thirty-fourth Dáil. This motion calls for and sets out our vision for the radical reset in housing policy as called for in the Govern…

We have not been in government for ten years.

No, they were not. They were not.

I welcome the Minister of State to the House and echo the comments of my colleague, Deputy Kelly, about Tony Maher. This programme for Government contains more reviews than the RTÉ Guide and offers little in the way of hope for renters, people on the housing list or people languishing in hotels, especially in my city, Limerick. It offers more of the same and does not contain anything remotely res…

The only reference in the programme for Government is a commitment to continue increasing capacity and opening more beds at UHL. That is not acceptable. The Government must expedite the publication of the HIQA review and commit to providing a model 3 hospital in the mid-west with an additional emergency department.

I rise today to raise with the Taoiseach the issue of sentencing and the need for sentencing reform on foot of the sentence handed down in recent days in the case of the tragic death of Joe Drennan in Limerick city. He was a very promising journalism student and had a bright future in front of him. He was killed because of a deliberate decision to drive dangerously, a decision made by somebody who…

Hear, hear.