In 2016, then Minister for Housing Simon Coveney published ‘Rebuilding Ireland’, which was peddled at the time as the definitive plan to end the shortage of housing and which we were told would bring us, as a society, towards a point where homelessness would be a thing of the past.

More than eight years later, the housing crisis has spiralled to ever deeper depths

House prices are at record highs, rents are out of control, and the number of homeless families is beyond what anyone could have ever thought possible.

The only constant throughout that period has been Fine Gael in power.

‘Rebuilding Ireland’, as with every government housing policy since, failed utterly.

Yet, it remains the blueprint upon which the plan of every subsequent Minister for Housing has been modelled.

When one considers the remarks of Simon Coveney on its publication, it is little wonder why every housing plan since has failed so spectacularly.

He stated that his objective would be to ensure that large social housing estates would be ‘a thing of the past’, in direct contrast to what we were able to do successfully, even in the pits of recession, from the 1930s to the 1980s - building........

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