Eoin O'Brien

They are not.

And my big concern is, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have been in government together one way or another for over a decade.

We keep hearing the same thing, that it's about supply, supply, supply.

This government is not approaching this crisis with the scale of ambition.

They're not introducing the level of investment.

They're not making the crucial reforms that we have set out, as have the Housing Commission, in great detail.

All they are doing is saying to renters today, you are going to pay ever increasing rents because we failed to deliver sufficient volume of social, affordable and private for purchase homes over the last decade.

And for Seamus to say that this is a blip when all other independent commentators are telling you we are going to see a period of sustained rental increases at a faster rate than we've seen for a quarter of a century.

And the consequences, just to repeat, are increased homelessness, increased immigration, increased return of adults to live with their families and friends.

And for people who can get these new rentals, they are going to be paying up to €5,000 extra in rent in a year.

That's the reality in Galway today as a consequence of the legislation that Seamus and his colleagues voted for, knowing it was going to punish renters with ever-increasing rip-off rents without any meaningful increase in supply.

See, the great mistake the government made when they had the temporary ban on no-fault evictions is they didn't use that breathing space to ramp up the investment in social, affordable and private for purchase homes.

That is what we have been calling for for a decade.

And the idea that somehow Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael's policy...

is increasing investment in the market, small and medium-sized landlords have been leaving for a decade.

That is why we have record levels of evictions.

In fact, according to the Residential Tenancies Board, last year there were fewer new tenancies registered than in the year before.

Newly built social houses, 9,000.

Absolutely not.

And you missed your target again.