Mary Butler (Waterford, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The fact that the county and city managers are coming in this afternoon is very important.

They are, first and foremost, providing most of the social housing in the country. We need to ask them about the turnover advice. Sometimes they are very slow with the purchase of private houses in council estates. In many instances, council estates have been built for 20 or 30 years where people have purchased their own homes and then sold them on. It is difficult to get the council to repurchase one of their own houses, especially in the south-east. The problem is that one can turnover a house there for €95,000 or €100,000, but one certainly would not build a house for that price.

We should also examine adding extensions to council houses because a mother and children might require a three-bedroom facility. The option of adding on an extra bedroom would certainly help. We should also seriously examine the HAP scheme, which is causing huge problems everywhere.