Mr. Ned Brennan:

The problem is that we have been talking about housing, not homes. The focus should be on delivering homes to people. Today's discussion is about people, not anything else. It is about the supports people require to have a reasonable standard of living. In the absence of a national housing plan, we are just stumbling from crisis to crisis. After the biggest boom the country has ever experienced, we have gone through a period of austerity and we now have 110,000 families on waiting lists. Fifty years ago, in 1966, when the first piece of modernising housing legislation was passed, there were 50,000 families on waiting lists. Now, some 50 years later, the figure is over double that. In the absence of a national housing plan, we will continue to stumble from crisis to crisis. That is the position. That is the response to Deputy Boyd Barrett's questions. We need a national housing plan.