Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

This crisis has been brewing for some time. There was a housing crisis throughout the years of the property boom, a crisis of affordable housing. Young people and young couples seeking to start a family were priced out of the housing market by the greed of developers and bankers. Hand-in-hand we had policies coming through local authorities referring to pathways to a home and that every homeless person would be in a home by 2010. It was an absolute disaster. Now, there is another policy stating that the homeless will be housed by 2016. The situation will unfold into another disaster because the bricks and mortar and the foundations are not being put in place and there is no plan in place to deal with the issue.

The combination of a property bubble and the housing crisis was facilitated by the previous Government's policy and it was supported by the Opposition parties in the local authorities at the time. The Labour and Fine Gael parties supported all these policies which were pushed through by Fianna Fáil in the local authorities in respect of housing.

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