Rory Hearne is a campaigner on housing issues. He is an author and an Associate Professor at Maynooth University.

I would like to play a role, along with my Social Democrats colleagues, in helping to solve the housing emergency and address health waiting lists, inadequate disability services and support local services. If elected, I will work in the Dail for positive change for the people of Dublin North West. I have been selected to replace the retiring Róisín Shortall TD, and I am determined to continue her excellent work. I have lived in Dublin’s Northside for over 20 years and I've worked with communities and in housing policy. I’m a father of four children and I would like to be in Government so we can deliver an Ireland where every child can realise their full potential, where all children have a home, and a fair and sustainable future.

The lack of affordable housing is the greatest issue. It is a massive failure of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. Their housing policies have not worked as they have never treated the crisis as an emergency. They have made policy for the developers, speculators and investor vulture funds, rather than building affordable homes. Most housing being built in Dublin is Build to Rent investor fund apartments that are absolutely unaffordable and none for sale. We in the Social Democrats have a fully cost deliverable plan to build 75,000 genuinely affordable homes if we get into Government, including 50,000 affordable homes for purchase. We will treat the housing crisis like the emergency it is, and take emergency action to solve the crisis, including developing the public capacity to deliver housing through local authorities and not for profit housing bodies, putting in place a rent freeze, a ban on ‘no-fault’ evictions, a tax on vacant and derelict properties to bring them into use, and investing in retrofitting homes so that we can ensure people have warm, energy efficient, homes. We could solve the housing crisis if the political will was there in the Government. We in the Social Democrats are determined to solve the housing crisis.

If elected, I would seek to use my speaking time to talk about the housing disaster that is affecting the lives of so many young and old across this country – from adults stuck living in their childhood bedroom to the thousands of children in homelessness, to renters in their 60s and 70s facing eviction and unaffordable rents, to parents and grandparents watching their children – the nurses, teachers and tradespeople we need – emigrate once more, because they don’t see hope of getting a home. We need a new direction for Ireland. We need to give people hope, that is what I would talk about – the human impact of the housing disaster and the solutions that we have that would fix this crisis.