I want to start by thanking all of the staff in the Houses of the Oireachtas. This is a uniquely fraught and adversarial working environment and it is somehow made pleasant by all of them, so I thank them very much.

On the last day of the Thirty-third Dáil, as we prepare for an election, people will be thinking about who they are going to vote for. I hope people will be wary of political parties that have a track record of broken promises. For example, in the last election campaign you promised to deliver 50,000 affordable purchase homes. After nearly five years in government, how many of them have been delivered? Less than 1,000, that is, 988 to be precise. That is just 2% of the Government's target. Last year no affordable purchase homes were delivered in 19 of the 31 council areas. In Dublin City Council not one affordable purchase home was delivered, nor in Galway city and county, Louth, Clare or Wicklow. I could go on. Even in those areas where a small number of affordable homes were built, the prices were nowhere near affordable. In Lusk in north Dublin, the full price of so-called affordable homes is in excess of €550,000, more than half a million euro. How can one call that an affordable home? This is not just an abuse of language, it is a con.

These broken promises come at a huge personal cost to many people. Every week, I meet people whose dreams of home ownership are crushed, people in their 20s, 30s and 40s who are still living in their childhood bedrooms, others who are still cramped in house shares because they cannot afford to rent alone. They are people who work hard and do not expect a whole lot in return. They are not looking for mansions, just a modest home, a secure roof over their head, somewhere they can start to build a life and family and put down roots in a community. Whatever they do, it is not enough. I find the worst is when I meet people and they feel their housing insecurity is a personal failure. I want to say very clearly to those people, you have done nothing wrong. You have been failed by this Government and by previous Governments that have turned a housing crisis into a complete housing disaster and have broken commitment after commitment.

This election is an opportunity for people to choose a new approach and vote for something different. The Social Democrats has a fully costed plan to deliver 50,000 affordable purchase homes. To ensure these homes are genuinely affordable, we would support the not-for-profit housing bodies and local authorities to build them, including in early stage finance.

To deliver this, we would zone land specifically for affordable housing and give the LDA powers to acquire that land by compulsory purchase order, CPO.

Does the Tánaiste at least acknowledge that he did not keep that promise he made to voters? How did Fianna Fáil's definition of an "affordable home" increase by €300,000?

I thank the Deputy for raising what is the most significant social issue of our generation. This Government, notwithstanding Covid-19, has made very significant progress and initiated a range of actions and initiatives on social and affordable homes of different types and supports for first-time buyers. A total of 125,000 new homes have been built since 2020, notwithstanding the lockdowns. That is way in excess of anything that had happened in the previous years. More homes have been completed in the past four and a half years than in the previous nine years combined, and we will exceed our Housing for All completion targets again this year. The pipeline is extremely strong, with work having begun on nearly 60,000 new homes in the past 12 months. That is almost double the figure for the previous 12-month period. Close to 33,000 homes were completed in 2023, the highest number in 15 years. Under the budget for 2025, for whichever new Government comes in, €6 billion has been provided in capital spending to help deliver social, affordable and cost-rental houses. Planning permissions for over 41,000 homes were granted in 2023, an increase of 21%.

It is clear that very significant momentum has been built up in respect of housing, and particularly on social housing, for example. Over 40,000 social homes had been added to the social housing stock up to quarter 2 of 2024, which is a significant achievement that dwarfs anything that was done prior to this period in government. We have seen the highest level of new-build social homes since 1975, with 8,110 new builds in 2023 out of a total of 12,000 built through various mechanisms, and a strong pipeline of social houses is coming.

In terms of affordability, we have expanded the help to buy scheme to support home ownership and 51,500 first-time buyers have been helped by the help to buy scheme. We have also introduced the first home bridge the gap scheme, which has significantly enabled a lot of young people to afford a house. We have introduced the cost-rental concept to bring in affordable rents and about 2,200 have been delivered by AHBs, local authorities and the LDA and through the cost-rental tenant in situ scheme. Nearly 6,000 affordable homes have been delivered as a result of all these initiatives. On the first home bridge the gap scheme, about 5,500 buyers have been approved. We have brought 10,000 vacant properties back into use. We have introduced a vacant property refurbishment grant of up to €70,000 where a property is derelict and close to 7,000 approvals have issued already.

By any objective assessment, huge progress has been made, but we need to do an awful lot more. We need to maintain this momentum and build more houses in a faster way over the next five years.

I think the Tánaiste can probably understand why people feel such a huge disconnect between the picture he paints and the reality they experience when they try to buy a home. Every year since the Government has been in office, the cost of an average home has gone up by more than €20,000. I asked the Tánaiste about the delivery of affordable purchase homes and he spent three minutes talking about everything apart from affordable purchase homes. He does not answer the question and he paints an entirely different picture.

While he was painting that different picture, he decided to home in on vacancy. This is a really good example of why what he is saying just feels like spin. At the moment, up to 100,000 vacant properties, in the middle of the biggest housing disaster, lie empty around the country while people are stuck at home in their childhood bedrooms or are experiencing homelessness, and the Government introduced the most pathetic excuse for a vacancy tax, at 0.3% at a time when house price inflation was at 10%. It then put it at zero-point-something-else per cent in the budget. If it wanted to tackle vacancy to try to actually bring those homes back into use, it would have matched the rate to, at the very least, the rate of house price inflation.

What it has done is introduce an incentive to continue sitting on a vacant property. We could say the same for stamp duty. The Government could ban the bulk purchasing of homes if it introduced a tax with teeth but it has not done that. It creates all this spin and a picture of introducing a vacancy tax and stamp duty to prevent the bulk purchasing of homes but neither of them is effective because house price inflation is higher than the tax the Government has set for vacancy. That is one example.

I ask the Tánaiste to please go back to the question I asked about affordable purchase homes. The Government promised to deliver 50,000 of those. We have fewer than 1,000.

The Deputy has painted a picture that, I would argue, does not represent the very significant progress that has been made on house building in the past four years. Supply is the key to the cost question-----

It is not. Affordability is.

Affordability is.

I did not interrupt anybody. I would also make the point that the Social Democrats voted against the Affordable Housing Act. The Deputy might understand why we sometimes feel there is a terrible disconnect between what social democratic parties and others articulate about housing in this House when, in practice, outside of the House they do different things. In here, they opposed the Affordable Housing Act and social democratic councillors-----

Answer the question.

-----have voted against housing developments such as Ballymastone in north County Dublin-----

That is not true.

-----where 1,200 social, affordable, cost-rental, affordable purchase and private homes are now, thankfully, under construction.

It is not true. We are against the sale of public land to private developers.

What about the Tánaiste’s running mate in Cork?

We oppose vulture funds. That is what we do.

The Social Democrats opposed that scheme. That is why people do feel, genuinely, that there is a disconnect of the sort Deputy Cairns spoke about, between her party’s actions on the ground and its delivery.

Do not be so disingenuous.

On the vacancy issue, the initiatives of the Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, relating to grants for derelict and vacant homes have been the most effective way of dealing with dereliction. I do not believe you can tax your way to housing supply.

You cannot tax-break your way either.

I have not seen Deputy Cairns's blueprint for housing. She has been here for four and a half years and her party has not produced any blueprint for housing. She has proposed no solutions other than, I would argue, to dampen further investment in the rental market in particular.

The Government is building for vulture funds.

That is simply not true.

Fianna Fáil does Fianna Fáil. That is what it does.

It is all just empty rhetoric.

Tá rud amháin cinnte domsa inniu agus is é sin gurb é seo mo lá deireanach i nDáil Éireann. Ba mhaith liom a rá go bhfuil mé an-bhuíoch de gach duine a thug cabhair agus tacaíocht dom trí na blianta. Tá mé an-dóchasach go mbeidh Councillor Hazel de Nortúin ina suí anseo tar éis an olltoghcháin.

I thank the staff of the Oireachtas. They are incredibly generous with their time and their help. No matter what department or where you look for help in this House, you get it 100%. I also want to say, however, that I am looking forward to not banging my head off a wall. I have done it for the past nine years and have had enough of it. Hazel can bang her head off the wall when she comes in here. I have fantastic colleagues and we have worked really hard to make a difference. We have put forward radical Bills that would change people's lives, make big changes to the climate and environment, make changes to the housing crisis the Government created and dent the desperation people feel in health, homelessness, housing and kids' special needs, and every which way, we have been blocked by Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, as have other progressive measures from the rest of the Opposition.

I want to focus today on how we end 100 years of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. When I was born in 1957, de Valera was in power, and before that, it had been Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael since the State was founded. We still have Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, although they have shrunk so much they have had to join forces. When will these parties stop making promises before an election and then breaking them once they get into power? When will they stop treating people as if they are just tools for their idea of control and power? To be honest, they have always preferred the interests of big business, developers, bankers and the rich in this country and that is why, as we live in one of the wealthiest countries on the planet, we have one of the greatest levels of inequality. It is to our shame that that is what goes on.

I also have a question for all of the Opposition groups and party leaders. When will they stop propping up Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and will they make a commitment to the Irish people that if they are returned in this election, they will not prop up either of these 100-year-old parties of failure? The failure is enormous. There is huge suffering in the homes of Ireland today, with kids with special needs and scoliosis, and people living in crowded, emotionally dangerous conditions, without any hope for the future. Young workers are exiting this country when they have their degrees, whether in education or health, to make a life for themselves elsewhere. As we close the Dáil today, the Government’s refusal to sanction Israel has been an utter disgrace and will be a legacy of the previous Dáil that nobody will accept. It is an utter disgrace that the Government has not passed the occupied territories Bill but it is now kicking it around as if it gives the Government some credibility.

When will the Government stop making false promises to the Irish public and breaking them once it gets into power? We have to end the 100 years of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, break the cycle and give people a real alternative. All of us on this side of the House have a responsibility to do that, including, by the way, those who call themselves Independents, who cannot wait to prop up either of the parties after the election.

I acknowledge and I am acutely aware that the Government and the country are facing significant challenges in respect of housing, which we discussed earlier, the cost of living, health, climate change and many other important issues, and I look forward to getting out about the country to debate these issues in the time ahead. However, it is important to meet head-on the narrative that the Deputy and her hard-left wing colleagues, along with Sinn Féin, are peddling: that the history of Ireland in the last century is somehow a history of failure and that Ireland is some sort of a failed state. That is a pernicious, insidious lie. The truth is that we have come from being one of the of the most poverty stricken countries in the 1920s to now having one of the highest standards of living in the world, with more people in employment than ever before. These are good jobs. In the past 30 years, the number of people in high-skilled employment has increased by 150%. I know the Deputy genuinely does not have an interest in this. I have noticed that over the past nine years and noticed the views of the party she represents.

The story of our success in attracting leading global firms to the country is talked about around the world. That is what we spent our time doing. The economic model in this country has worked and it should be debated in this election. I believe in the economic model that has attracted enterprise into the country and allowed native enterprise to develop and grow. Less well known, but equally uninteresting to the Deputy, is that our indigenous companies are among the most productive in all of Europe. For every job created in Ireland by a foreign company, Irish-domiciled companies create more than one elsewhere. This makes us one of the top five nations in the world for creating overseas jobs. We are exporting more goods than ever before and we are world leaders in food and drink exports. We export 90% of what we produce and our goods are shipping to more markets and further across the world than ever before.

That economic success has given us the resources to bring about an equally powerful social, educational and health transformation in that 100 years. We now have an education system that is one of the strongest in Europe and the world. The number of children at secondary level and school completion rates are tops across the European Union and the world more generally. Pupil-teacher ratios have never been better.

There are 36 in school classes.

Just more than 50% of the population has completed higher level education and that has doubled in just 20 years. More pupils than at any point in the past century are being taught as Gaeilge. We are living much longer now, with an average life expectancy of 82 years. We are healthier than we have ever been and, for example, smoking is at the lowest level in 50 years. Deputy Smith may not know this but Irish people are now living 25 years longer than they were 100 years ago. Some 20,000 fewer people die in Ireland every year than died a century ago. Our population has grown by 50%. Cancer mortality rates have been declining for the past 30 years while death from heart disease has decreased by two thirds in the past 40 years. In the past 50 years, public health spending has increased. I could go on.

The Tánaiste has gone on long enough.

We have made a lot of progress in this country. It is wrong that Deputy Smith does not at least have the good grace to acknowledge the extraordinary progress the country has made, notwithstanding the challenges that we have. We have made progress as a country.

There is €25 billion of a surplus in the economy, with 140,000 people on the housing list, 14,000 to 15,000 people homeless and rising, 1 million people on waiting lists for health care and 700,000 people living below the poverty line. We can throw figures across the floor at each other but these are facts that the Tánaiste does not address. As a left-wing TD and a socialist, I came in here to try to address them, and that is why I talked about the headbanging exercise. The Government is not interested in ending inequality in this country. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael are only interested in looking after the wealthy, the businessmen, the developers and those who gained millions of euro in profit by ripping off people in the cost-of-living crisis in this country. They have never challenged them. Yes, the Government will throw us all a few hundred euros towards electricity bills but it never challenges the profiteering and never challenges those who are milking it in this country. Hence the inequality.

It is not rocket science to say that if there is extreme wealth at the other end and extreme poverty at this end, there is a way of knitting the two together and ending poverty and inequality. That is to tax the wealth of the rich, take the money off them and stop being their favourite guys in the Dáil. Be the favourite guys of the ordinary people. That is why I say to the Members on this side of the House that we have a duty to stop propping up Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and create a real left alternative to run this country.

I am the son of a busman.

So am I. I am the daughter of a busman.

I came from a working-class community.

So what?

I did not interrupt the Deputy. I will tell her "So what?"

I am the daughter of a busman.

Order, please. Let the Tánaiste speak.

I am the son of a busman who was a founding member of the NBRU.

Same.

So was my da.

I was the first to get to second level education in our family, and we were the first generation to get to third level.

I was the first to do the leaving certificate in my family.

I do not need lectures from the far left, and many from the far left who were educated in far more luxurious schools than I was ever educated in.

But do not address the inequality. The Tánaiste can talk all he likes about his childhood but he has not addressed the inequality.

Order, please. Will you let the Tánaiste respond?

I had the good grace to let the Deputy speak but she does not have the good grace to allow me to speak. I am a product of the Fianna Fáil-Donogh O’Malley revolution of free education.

God help us.

I participated in it. It was not “God help us” because it brought on a lot of us. It gave me a passion for education. That is why I became Minister for Education, and to make sure every child in this country had an opportunity to participate in education.

I do not trade figures across the House. When I mentioned school completion, I mentioned it because I took part in initiatives around school completion.

There are 110,000 children with special needs that are not being met.

Deputy, will you stop interrupting, please?

It is because it matters to me. It is why I am in politics. The Deputy does not have a monopoly on care or compassion on her side of the House. Where she fails is in her understanding. She declared she is a socialist and she is entitled to be, but she has never embraced the Irish economic model that has created enterprise and the opportunity for people to grow and develop in this country. That is the fundamental difference between us, and we should debate that in this House.

Not the inequality. Do not debate the inequality.

I believe the Deputy and others want to bring down that economic model and want to destroy enterprise in this country, which would make more people unemployed, create more poverty and make us all much poorer.

Give him a clap, lads.

I feel like I am flogging a dead dog with this one, but anyway, one last time with feeling, I suppose. I recall listening to an interview between Newstalk’s Kieran Cuddihy and the Tánaiste. He kind of caught him off guard by asking why he wanted to be Taoiseach. His answer was simple: "community". I always felt that the Tánaiste uses the term “community” in the John McGahern sense of the close-knit bonds of tradition, shared experience and the familiarity of your own personal hinterland that shaped you deeply. Watching the Tánaiste's career, it is apparent that the oppressive weight of Cork's expectations, its deep hurts, the poverty and the hopelessness that was seared with the Sunbeam, Ford and Dunlop closures, as well as the gossipy smallness of that conservative little city’s politics, made the Tánaiste's brand of politics. For me, this explains why he felt it was okay to leave so much of the country unrepresented at Cabinet and why a Government endowed with an unprecedented capacity to spend could patronise Cork so unfairly.

The Tánaiste might rationalise that he was just doing what the Ross O'Carroll-Kelly-types did for Dublin in the previous Government. In truth, he has just reproduced the hurt felt as a young Cork politician; reproduced it in other parts of the country, particularly the borders, the west midlands and the south east. In other words, in places that do not matter to this Government. This was the dark side of community that led the Tánaiste to renege on his promise to deliver 24-7 cardiac care to University Hospital Waterford, UHW, and to the people of the south east. The Tánaiste first met me when I was a protestor campaigning for this vital service. His fully broken promise restored a seat to his party in Waterford. Watching the Tánaiste and the Government sit on its hands during confidence and supply led me to stand for the people of Waterford and to promise to fight for this and other issues. We thought that having a party with the health portfolio and with our TD installed in the Department of Health, 24-7 cardiac care would finally be realised. Perhaps the Minister thought that too when he repeatedly turned up on Damien Tiernan's local radio show, renewing the forever broken promises of extended hours that have still not happened.

As Maya Angelou wisely said, "When someone shows you who they are, believe them". The Tánaiste has shown us who he is and we have no reason not to believe.

I am in a state of shock at the Deputy's description of Cork politics and psychology.

And Waterford.

I must invite the Deputy to Cork. He has had an obsession with Cork, which is quite interesting. I do not know who he has been working with on that but-----

I have an obsession with inequality, Tánaiste.

I think it is a bit much to describe as conservative and gossipy the politics of the city of Cork. Many Cork people would be offended by that. The modern city is broadminded. It is a great maritime city. It is open and inclusive and successful culturally. Cillian Murphy's win at the Oscars is the latest manifestation of the cultural richness of the city. I know the Deputy wants to talk about Waterford, which I have a great affection for and belief in. If I were to make a criticism, I would say that the Deputy has been talking Waterford and the south east down too much.

Negatives.

This Government has invested very significantly in Waterford. The €170 million for the North Quays' development is transformative in the heart of the city. I am delighted with that. The Deputy has to acknowledge the establishment of the South East Technological University. Lately, there has been great news about the veterinary college at Kildalton, the pharmacy school now founded in Waterford and the purchase of the former Waterford Crystal site for campus expansion. I was one of the first Ministers to purchase land for the expansion of the university in Waterford. Those are real achievements which will help Waterford and the south east to develop.

At the hospital, a new surgical hub and a new pathology laboratory are on the way. Extra staff has been recruited and there are now 2,796 people working in the hospital. There has been huge advancement in elder care and in mental health services in Waterford. A second cath lab is open, Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., with 24 additional staff secured. Some 18 new staff for weekend cover is to be completed. That will give 90% coverage, which is enormous progress during the term of this Government. I want to pay tribute to the Minister of State, Deputy Mary Butler. Her appointment to the Department of Health has been very impactful for Waterford in terms of the second cath lab and more generally in terms of mental health developments, in particular around the ADHD team that has been appointed and the crisis-resolution team in mental health which has been appointed.

Some €7 million has been provided for Walsh Park, a stadium which needed investment for growth. Overall, €14 million in sports capital has been provided. I accept that much more needs to be done but in the last four and a half years we have witnessed probably the most significant investment in Waterford, more than in any previous decade.

The Tánaiste's ability to extol a narrative that does not exist knows no bounds. When people go to bed at night in Cork, they have no worries about heart attack access. However, when people go to bed in Waterford and the south east, they have significant worries, particularly those who have ongoing cardiac issues. In the last three months, three friends of mine have ended up in Waterford hospital, after hours, at night, with a heart attack. All three went to Cork and not one of them got there in under four hours from the time of presentation. The Tánaiste is a former Minister for Health. He knows that the clinical standard is 90 minutes. Four hours means cardiac muscle damage, further ongoing complications and a shortening of life.

The Tánaiste and Deputy Butler stood for a photograph in 2016 and any innocence about what the Tánaiste promised has long since evaporated. As a former Minister for Health, the Tánaiste knows the importance of this. The physiology of people in Waterford and the south east is no different from anybody else's in Ireland. It is palpably unfair that it has taken three and a half years to deliver a second cath lab, what was done in a private hospital in less than three months. We still do not have a 24-7 service and we still do not even have a seven-day service. That is what I am pointing out and that is the record the Tánaiste is finishing this Government with.

The Deputy has to acknowledge that in all of these matters of cardiac care and so on, the clinicians set the standards. This was agreed by most parties about 20-odd years ago, when there were political rows all over the place about where various services were to be located. The idea of national strategies in cancer and cardiovascular were developed, which have had the kind of huge impacts I outlined earlier in a response to another Deputy. Those would not have happened if we had not taken politics out of health, to a certain extent. I sense that we are now bringing politics back into the debate in terms of-----

Will the Tánaiste address why the extra positions were in the HSE embargo?

I am doing so. I am trying to make the point that we have gone back to clinicians to say that we need to do this differently in Waterford, with the result that 90% coverage will be achieved with the provision of the second cath lab and the extra staffing that will facilitate the weekend cover, which will be key. The clinicians tell us this will give us 90% coverage. Compared to where we were when this Government took office, that is significant progress by any yardstick.

There are positions under the HSE embargo and emergency appointments that have not been covered.

There has been recruitment and there will be further recruitment to the facility. I appreciate the Deputy's advocacy.

That completes Leader's Questions, but before we move on, Deputy Pearse Doherty, quite rightly and as is his right, has challenged my ruling earlier in respect of a point of order that he wished to raise. Salient rulings 374 and 379 make it quite clear that the Chair can refuse to accept a point of order if it is being made during a period of disorder. However, if the Deputy has a point he wants to make, he can do so now and we will make a determination on it.