At the weekend, the Taoiseach said that when it comes to housing policy, his highest priority is home ownership. I think lots of people, especially people of my generation, find that literally impossible to believe. Fine Gael in government has literally done the opposite to increasing home ownership. Not that anyone needed any more evidence of this, but today we have more of it from the census. The rate of home ownership fell from nearly 70% in 2016 to just 66% last year.

We know this inability to buy a home is not spread evenly among the population. People in their 20s, 30s and 40s are disproportionately locked out of home ownership. Does the Taoiseach know that in 2006, which is the year before he was elected to the Dáil, the average age of a first-time buyer in Ireland was 29? Last year, the average age of young people who finally managed to move out of their parents' home was 28 and, therefore, we have gone from young people aspiring to home ownership to people finding it increasingly difficult to even move out of their childhood bedrooms at the same age, yet the Taoiseach still claims with a straight face that Fine Gael is somehow the party of home ownership. I do not honestly know who he thinks he is kidding but I can tell him that people have had enough of that kind of spin. Fine Gael has been in office for 12 years. At what point does he think the party will take some responsibility for the fact that its approach is not working? It is difficult to know when it has yet to even acknowledge the fact that its approach is not working. Meanwhile the share of 25 to 34-year-olds who own their own home more than halved between 2004 and 2019 plummeting from just 60% to 27%.

The fact is Fine Gael cannot blame anybody else for this miserable record. The best it can maybe do is blame its coalition partners Fianna Fáil. The saddest part is that it is not the Government that is paying the price for this failure. Tens of thousands of people all over the country regularly wonder, "What if?" What if they had been able to buy a modest home at the same their parents were able to? What would their lives look like now? What kind of opportunities could they have availed of? Would relationships have lasted? Would they have children now? Would their mental health be better? Would they have been able to save for their retirement?

I regularly speak to young people whose anger has now become weariness. They have witnessed so much failure and have been so angry for so long that they are now weary and exhausted. They are tired of broken promises and the ridiculous spin that the Government can fix this housing disaster. They now wonder what will become of them when they are older and cannot afford to pay rent on their pensions. All the while, the Taoiseach is trying to frame its party as the party of home ownership. Does he accept that he has presided over a continuing collapse in home ownership rates? Is he going to continue trying to frame Fine Gael as the party of home ownership when all of the evidence points to the opposite? Does he think people fall for that spin?

I am somebody who believes in home ownership. I believe no form of housing security is better than home ownership. Not only does home ownership give people the security of owning their own home, it means they do not have to pay rent when they retire. It also gives them financial freedom such as the option of borrowing against the value of the home to return to education. It gives them so many options that they just do not have if they do not own their own home.

Yes, I acknowledge that home ownership has fallen in the period of the census between 2016 and 2022 but at 66%, it is still the case that two thirds of people in Ireland own their own home. I want that figure to go back up again. I would like to see it going back up towards 70%. I know that there is a generational divide and that many people in their 20s and 30s and even their 40s are unable to purchase their own home at the moment. What we have seen in the past couple of months, and it should be borne in mind that the census was done last summer, is a very major uptake in the number of people buying their first home.

We see in or around 400 or 500 people every week buying their first home. It should be borne in mind that there is probably an underestimate because couples are counted as one when it comes to these figures. They are from the CSO and from the Banking and Payments Federation of Ireland. In the past six months, there has been a significant uptick in the number of people buying their first home. It is the highest we have seen since the Celtic tiger period. This gives me hope and it indicates that the policies that have been introduced by this Government are starting to work. It is about increased supply. It is also about the help-to-buy scheme, which helps people to get their deposit. It is also about the first home scheme, which helps people to bridge the gap between the mortgage they can get and the house they want to buy. It is also about vacancies and the vacant property grants we are giving people to breathe life into old buildings and turn them back into new homes.

The Social Democrats have tabled a motion and they claim to be the party of home ownership. They are against all of these things. They regularly object to new housing. They are against the help-to-buy and first home scheme. How can it say it is the party of home ownership?

It was Fine Gael that said it was the party of home ownership.

You are not.

Excuse me?

You are not.

Please, Deputy Cairns is speaking.

The reality is, and everybody knows it as the facts are clear; rents have never been higher, house prices have never been higher, homelessness has never been higher and the number of young adults living in their bedrooms in their parents' homes has never been higher. Rates of home ownership have fallen, especially among the younger population. A further collapse in home ownership was not inevitable nor was it an accident. It is the Government continuing to pursue exactly the same policies over and over again.

I am glad the Taoiseach mentioned the Social Democrats' motion tomorrow because we have suggestions in that. I regularly hear the Taoiseach ask in the House that we come forward with suggestions. Part of the motion proposes redirecting funds from the Department to buyers to bring down the price of housing for homeownership rather than putting it into the pockets of developers. That strategy has been failing for years. We have suggested alternatives and we are tabling a motion in the Dáil tomorrow. Will the Taoiseach consider any of them? Given that he has acknowledged that all of the facts I raised are true, will he consider any of the proposals in the Social Democrats' motion tomorrow?

We will consider them and she will see our response to the motion when the debate occurs. The Deputy can list statistics and that is fair enough. There are other statistics that I could mention. House prices have been falling for several months. They have fallen for nearly six months in a row in Dublin. They have peaked and they are falling. The number of people buying their first home is almost 400 a week now. This is the highest since the Celtic tiger era. The Deputy cannot deny that reality. It is a fact.

What are we doing? We have reduced development levies to increase supply. We have put in place the help-to-buy scheme, which has helped tens of thousands of people raise a deposit for their first home. We have the first home scheme in place, which bridges the gap between the mortgage people can get from the banks and the cost of the home they want to buy. We also have local authority home loans. By and large the Deputy's party do not support these policies. They would take them away and that would make it harder for people to buy their first home.