Daft.ie reports today that the asking price for a home is nearly 40% higher than pre-pandemic levels. Meanwhile, 5,145 children are in homelessness. Last Friday's figures again showed a new shameful record, with the creeping up of the numbers in homelessness and a new record being set every month. Every day, we all hear from people with good jobs, many of them couples with two incomes, who are giving up on trying to buy a home because they simply have no prospect of being able to get a mortgage or afford to buy a home. The Land Development Agency chairperson has estimated that as many as 70% of workers in Ireland are effectively priced out of the housing market, both for renting and for purchase.

In next week's budget, the Government must make a meaningful dent in the national response to the housing emergency. We must see a real plan to increase the supply of housing. Our concern is that the budget will simply set more fictitious goals, as fictitious as the numbers that Fianna Fáil gave us on housing delivery in the general election campaign last year. Can the Taoiseach assure us there will be a real plan in place to build more homes?

House prices are very high, and too high for many young people. That said, since 2020, notwithstanding Covid, about 148,000 new houses have been delivered in this country. The percentage of first-time buyers has been steadily increasing from about 25% of all purchases in 2015 to just under 40% in July 2025, and the latest data indicate further increases. First-time buyers continue to make the largest contribution to the mortgage market, accounting for 63% of approvals. Notwithstanding high prices - and they are too high, in my view - first-time buyers are getting opportunities to buy. About 119,000 first-time buyer mortgages were drawn down from 2020 to the first quarter of 2025. We need more supply – that is the key. The national development plan outlines the enormous Government expenditure that will ensue in the coming years. The budget will be supportive of housing but we need more private sector investment in housing as well.