Dáil live: Political betrayal of young people evident in ‘housing disaster’ - new Social Democrats leader Holly Cairns

Political choices made by successive governments have resulted in the aspirations and dreams of an entire generation being either “diminished or destroyed”, the new leader of the Social Democrats Holly Cairns has said.

Speaking during her first Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil on Wednesday, Ms Cairns said nowhere was the political betrayal of young people more evident than in the “housing disaster”.

The Cork South West TD said she was a member of the “first ever generation who will be worse off than our parents” and that this “didn’t happen by accident”.

Ms Cairns said skyrocketing rents and exorbitant house prices have resulted in the collapse of home ownership rates, with Ireland now “at the bottom third of EU countries when it comes to home ownership”.

“You told a recent meeting of your parliamentary party you were alarmed to see that figure, but Taoiseach, were you surprised because all of this happened on Fine Gael’s watch,” she said.

The Social Democrats leader said the housing disaster wasn’t just about “bricks and mortar”.

“It’s about young people whose adult lives are on hold because they can’t afford to move out of their childhood bedrooms,” she said.

“It’s about couples postponing having a family because they can’t find affordable housing. It’s about the stress and anxiety that causes once happy relationships to break down.

“It’s about a lack of hope. It’s about despair. It’s about fear for the future, that your life will be permanently on hold, that you could be served an eviction notice at any moment, that you will never be able to afford to do what your own parents did on just one income; own a modest home.”

Ms Cairns said the housing crisis was now a “social catastrophe” that was now threatening the State’s economy as illustrated by a recent report from the Irish Business Network, Chambers Ireland.

“An economy cannot function where workers cannot afford to buy or rent a home and neither can a society,” she said.

“Fine Gael has been in Government for almost my entire adult life. Your party first promised to address what was a housing crisis in 2014; nine years later, it’s an unprecedented housing disaster.

“Promises have been broken, targets have not been met, and lives are being ruined as a result.”

Ms Cairns asked the Taoiseach when would people on average incomes be able to afford to buy or rent a home and “how much longer do we have to wait for the Government’s [housing] plan to work?”

In response, Mr Varadkar said he wished to take the opportunity to congratulate Ms Cairns on her election as leader of the Social Democrats.

“It is an enormous honour to be chosen by your party to lead them. It is a tough job and much of the work goes unrecognised, whether it’s fundraising, dealing with party accounts, disputes between public reps, internal rows, staff matters. It is all before you,” he said.

“It is a very tough job and a very big job and I honestly do wish you a fair wind in that regard.”

The Fine Gael leader also recognised the work of the former Social Democrat leaders Róisín Shortall and Catherine Murphy. Mr Varadkar said during his time in politics that very few new parties had survived and “very few have six TDs after eight years”.

“It is a success that you’ve brought the party to this point. I don’t think any party since the PDs [Progressive Democrats] has managed to reach that level of success.

“Of course, most new parties don’t survive their second leader but hopefully that won’t be the case,” he said.

The Taoiseach said he was determined that this year the State should “turn the corner on the housing crisis”.

“I heard you say that you believe that you will be the first generation of young people in a long time that are worse off than their parents but I haven’t thrown in the towel on that,” he said.

Mr Varadkar also said he acknowledged that young people were being let down in relation to housing.

A full public inquiry into the State’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic won’t be “done quickly” and “will take time”, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said.

Mr Varadkar added that he was “determined” to have an inquiry up and running in 2023, “ideally by the middle of the year”.

The Taoiseach was responding to Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín during Leaders’ Questions in the Dáil on Wednesday, who said information given to his party by the HSE showed that well over 40 per cent of Covid deaths in Ireland were linked to hospital or nursing home outbreaks.

Mr Tóibín also said that 44 families are currently starting legal action against the State “as a result of what happened”.

The Aontú leader asked why the Government was opposed to a “public investigation that would find out the truth and provide justice for families who’ve lost a loved one so tragically”.

“Throughout Covid, the Government was focused on restricting people to two kilometers from their homes, preventing people from going to funerals, to school and to work, when in reality, the most dangerous place you could be was in a nursing home or hospital; the two locations run or regulated by the State,” he said.

“No Government could get everything right, we accept that, but there were serious and disastrous mistakes made during Covid.”

In response, the Taoiseach said it was always going to be the case that “with hindsight things will look differently than they did at the time when we had so little information”.

Mr Varadkar said he remembered former chief executive of the HSE Paul Reid saying at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic that there was no “roadmap”, “playbook” or “lived experience” as to how to deal with a pandemic of that nature.

“[He said] we would probably get about 70 per cent of things right and 30 per cent of things wrong and I think that’s probably correct,” Mr Varadkar said.

“But it is important that we find out what we got right and what we got wrong and that’s why there will be a public inquiry.”

The Fine Gael leader said a public inquiry would be established this year to examine how the pandemic was handled in Ireland, covering healthcare aspects, testing, public health advice and the economic and social response.

“The exact format of that [inquiry] we haven’t decided on yet, but I do want it to be done properly and whether that’s using the commission investigations mechanism, which has its pros and cons, or a tribunal mechanism or a different mechanism, I’m open to that being considered but there are pluses and minuses to all of these all of these mechanisms.

“I don’t think it will be done quickly, by the way, I think it will take time to do it properly but I’m determined to have that up and running this year, ideally by the middle of the year.”

Mr Varadkar added he was sure there were people who went into hospital who were in good health and contracted the virus and died of it.

“Unfortunately that does happen in healthcare and it’s never something anybody wants to see happen,” he said.

“But the vast majority of people who died of Covid in Ireland were people who were elderly, people who had underlying medical conditions, and that is how viruses work and that would have been the case in the community as well as hospitals and as well as nursing homes.”

He said “we shouldn’t create the impression that all or even most of those deaths were preventable”.