MARY Lou McDonald accused Micheal Martin of selling the public “a load of bull” in the run up to the election after his claims that 40,000 homes would be built in 2024 were found to be false.
On the first day of the new Dail, the Taoiseach came under fire from Sinn Fein and the Social Democrats on housing as figures from the CSO show that only 30,000 homes were built last year.
In the run up to the general election, both Fianna Fail’s Micheal Martin and Fine Gael’s Simon Harris repeatedly boasted that there would be close to 40,000 new homes built by the end of 2024.
However, official figures from the Central Statistics Office show that these predictions were way off with only 30,330 new homes built by the end of 2024.
Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald claimed that the Taoiseach’s “election lies were exposed” as she accused the Fianna Fail leader of purposely misleading the public to win votes.
She said: “The truth is that your claim of 40,000 new homes for 2024 was a load of bull and well you knew it but you chose to repeat this claim again and again in an effort to mislead voters.
“The housing crisis touches every part of our society. It has driven desperation and driven despair.
“Bad enough that you failed to solve this crisis but worse that you openly and knowingly deceived the public on this matter in the course of the last election.”
The Taoiseach admitted that he was “extremely disappointed” in the number of new homes completed last year but denied attempting to mislead the public.
He confessed that “we got the figure wrong” but claimed that he got the 40,000 prediction from reports published early in 2024 from Deutsche Bank, Ernest and Young, and Cairn Homes.
He defended the last Government’s housing output as he claimed 130,000 homes were built since 2020 and confessed more needs to be done to reach 60,000 homes per year by 2030.
Social Democrats deputy leader Cian O’Callaghan slammed the Taoiseach’s defence as “the weakest answer I’ve ever seen you deliver in this House”.
He blasted the Taoiseach for “completely and utterly disregarding the hard data coming from the official State bodies like the CSO that were completely disputing your 40,000 homes claim”.
The Soc Dems’ TD said people’s “hopes and dreams of owning a home has been shattered by the lack of delivery” on housing by the last Government.
NO ATTEMPT TO MISLEAD
In response, the Taoiseach said there was no attempt to purposely mislead the public and hit out at the Social Democrats for failing to go into Government after the election if they really wanted to solve the housing crisis.
The Fianna Fail leader accused the Social Democrats of bringing nothing to the table when the two parties met after the election to discuss forming a government.
He said: “Your main contribution in that meeting was – and I remember it well – you looking at the watch and it was nudge, nudge time to get out to get the six o’clock news to get the sound bite. That was your contribution to government talks.
“You had no commitment to going into government.”
