Speech of the Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on Motion of Confidence in Government, 29 March 2023

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Ceann Comhairle,

I move that this House has confidence in the government.

Ceann Comhairle,

This is a good government. Three parties working together.

We led Ireland through the pandemic saving lives and livelihoods. We have secured a new agreement on Northern Ireland and Brexit preventing a hard border. We have helped families and businesses to weather the cost-of-living crisis through unprecedented financial support. This was only possible due to our prudent management of the public finances.

For only the second time in our history, we have full employment, a job for everyone who wants one. And for a country that knows the painful experience of more than a century of emigration, we are now once again home to more than 5 million people, with young people coming to Ireland from all over the world to avail of economic opportunities here and, under this government, there are more citizens returning home than leaving.

We have made major strides forward on workers’ rights including increases in the minimum wage, statutory sick pay and parental leave. We’re reducing the cost of healthcare, childcare, going to school or college and we are improving the quality of those services all the time.

And notwithstanding the very real problems with access to our public health service, good patient outcomes now ensure we have the highest life expectancy in the EU.

In a world of 200 countries, Ireland is consistently ranked in the top ten or 20 by almost every measure. By any objective analysis, this is a government that should have the confidence of the House.

It is also a government that can do more and can do better.

Ceann Comhairle,

I am conscious that this motion was triggered by a motion of no confidence from the Labour Party related to the housing shortage.

I believe the housing crisis cuts so deep because it offends our sense of fairness, our fundamental belief in what Government is for and what it should do.

Housing is a basic need and a human right.

Family homelessness, in particular, shakes our faith in our Republic which is founded on the idea that all children should be cherished equally.

Solving the housing crisis is, therefore, one of the greatest political challenges of our time and an imperative.

Due to a rising population, smaller household size and the scarring effects of the construction/banking/fiscal crisis, we have an enormous deficit of housing in Ireland. Perhaps, 250,000 units.

But we are making progress.

Last year, we built more social housing than any year since 1975. This year we’ll build even more. No government in my lifetime has been more committed to social housing than this one. That matters.

In December, we had more First Time Buyers buying their first home than in any month since records began in 2010. And more young couples and singles bought their first home last year than any year in 16 years. That gives me hope.

And we have exceeded our main target by building 30,000 new homes last year not including student accommodation or derelict properties brought back into use.

Ceann Comhairle,

I admire and respect the passion, and indignation, shown by those trying to find solutions, whether in this House or outside of it.

It speaks to our empathy and compassion as a nation, our determination to make things better and to care for others. As a government, our job is to match this passion with action.

We have to lead with ideas that are realistic and implementable, and we need to demonstrate convincingly that we understand the scale of the crisis and that we care about those experiencing its consequences.

My only criticism of proceedings in this House is that, too often it allows critics of the government to show passion and indignation without presenting new ideas, let alone having them tested. So instead of honesty about the scale of the problem and what can be achieved given the constraints - we get quick fixes, simple solutions, populist rhetoric, politicians claiming to care more than others, even conspiracy theories about the causes of the crisis and the demonisation of those who are working every day to relieve it.

It is political theatre. Performative anger. Performance art. And I think more and more people are starting to see through it.

The Labour Party motion is just another example of this.

Ceann Comhairle,

If the opposition is successful in winning this vote, it would mean Dáil Eireann would be dissolved tonight. There’d be an election in April sometime, the Dáil would not meet until May and it might well be into the summer before we’d have an elected government.

The eviction moratorium would lapse on March 31st anyway and no new primary legislation could be passed to deal with the housing crisis for several months.

Knowing this, it is profoundly disingenuous to claim that the Labour motion was about renters’ rights or people facing homelessness.

It is about competition – competition for attention - on the opposition benches.

Four parties trying to outdo each other to come up with new, more dramatic language to describe the housing situation as though somehow that would actually help anyone.

When it comes to solutions, we get utopian populist ones. The latest is a promise from the Labour Party to provide a million homes in ten years. When asked how the number was arrived at or how it would be realised, the Leader of the Labour Party had no answers. When pressed, she took a page straight out of the President of Sinn Féin’s book – ‘sure aren’t the Irish great at building things’.

Ceann Comhairle,

We all know where the figure of 1 million promised new homes came from. It’s a round number. That’s all. And there was a Conference speech to be made.

In a similar vein, last October, the Leader of the Labour Party challenged me here in the Chamber to impose, and I quote, ‘an immediate and temporary eviction ban for this winter’. ‘We need a winter eviction ban’ – she said. Last week, we were criticised by the same Labour Leader for making the winter the basis for the moratorium even though she suggested it!

I know that Labour does not have confidence in the government. But it seems to me that it has long lost confidence in itself.

It does not know whether to stand over its decisions in Government and say that it would do it all again, for the good of the country, if given the chance or whether like a character in the Crucible it should recant, confess, purge itself of its own past in the hope of being embraced back into the fold by the wider Left and so spare itself more fire.

It is caught in a trap of its own making. It was in Government not too long ago and held the housing brief and the public expenditure brief for five of the past 12 years.

Ceann Comhairle,

It's a truth never acknowledged – but I am going to say it - every party in this House seems to believe the housing crisis was terribly mismanaged, except for the periods when they were in Government. It’s remarkably convenient, but not coherent.

No wonder Sinn Féin is so happy – they get to be consistent and direct their ire at everyone. Of course, if you mention the housing crisis in the North you are shouted down. They don’t want voters to know what 20 years of on-off Sinn Féin Government replete with Sinn Féin housing, finance and deputy first ministers really looks like.

Ceann Comhairle,

Extending the moratorium for a few more months or until the end of January or for another year or even two, would have been the easier political decision to make – the path of least resistance. But it wouldn’t have been the right one. It would have made homelessness worse, just at a later point. That’s not a solution.

But there are solutions. Last year, over 5,000 people were lifted out of homelessness or were prevented from becoming homeless in the first place by way of a new tenancy being created – sometimes social, sometimes private rented. An estimated 50,000 new tenancies were created in the last year alone and we anticipate a similar number this year. That is the solution – more social housing, more new tenancies.

That is the answer to the question: where will they go? And that will be the answer for the vast majority of people affected by the lifting of the temporary winter eviction ban.

Ceann Comhairle, our mission as a government is to implement genuine solutions – more and better housing for all.

Driving us is the exact same passion and indignation that drives our opponents. The difference is we will be honest about the solutions, the constraints, the timelines, the unintended consequences of any actions.

This is a crisis we will overcome. I commend this motion to the House.