The Minister for Housing must explain why his department underspent by one billion euro, the Sinn Féin Spokesperson for Housing has insisted.
TD Eoin Ó Broin said in a statement: "The buck stops with Darragh O’Brien."
"After three years as Housing Minister, he must account for his failures and answer the question: Where are the affordable homes?"
Mr Ó Broin recently obtained statistics showing the Government did not spend one billion euro of the Department of Housing's budget.
Speaking to Newstalk, Mr Ó Broin said: "This isn't just about numbers, it’s about real people."
"We have huge numbers of young workers – teachers, guards, nurses, people in the private sector and services- and they just can't afford to put a roof over their heads.
"We need a Government that is going to deliver the houses that thousands of people, particularly working people, need."
Minister for Housing must explain colossal failure to deliver affordable homes - @EOBroin
"The buck stops with Darragh O’Brien. After three years as Housing Minister, he must answer a simple question: Where are the affordable homes?"https://t.co/t9rrFTJ8XE pic.twitter.com/YB2SvmC0cR
— Sinn Féin (@sinnfeinireland) April 16, 2023
The Department for Housing previously attributed the underspending to COVID-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine - but Mr Ó Broin is not satisfied with this explanation.
"The Minister will blame COVID and the war in Ukraine and everything other than himself – but that underspend is getting bigger every year," he said.
"Last year, it was almost half a billion and in the quarter of this year, 29% of the Minister’s budget remained unspent."
Mr Ó Broin also told Newstalk that this "isn't the first time Darragh O'Brien hasn't been able to get his act together with respect to affordable housing".
He said Mr O'Brien supported Fine Gael and former Minister for Housing Eoghan Murphy and "claimed to have secured hundreds of millions of euros to provide 6,000 affordable homes from 2019 to 2021".
There were no affordable homes to purchases and just over 40 to rent, according to Mr Ó Broin.
He said: "This is a minister that not only has affordable housing targets that are too low, but he can’t even achieve them."
Affordable housing motion
Mr Ó Broin's demands come ahead of a Sinn Féin motion on affordable housing.
The motion states that the Government must "must dramatically increase its investment in the delivery of genuinely affordable homes".
"That investment should deliver at least 8,000 affordable homes to rent and buy per year," the motion says.
The motion also calls for the "controversial" Shared Equity Loan scheme and the "so-called" Help to Buy scheme to be scrapped and replaced with affordable housing. ]
The motion will be debated this Tuesday in the Dáil.
