Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I echo the call made by the previous speaker. I also raised that issue a couple of weeks ago and I really think the Minister has to take that action. It is not right to pretend that HAP is a permanent housing solution when it is not. Some people are satisfied with HAP. If they are happy to be off the list, that is fair enough. However, it is not right to take people off the housing waiting list compulsorily when they have been on it for ten or 15 years and to put them into what are, in many cases, precarious situations. In some cases people have been through two or three accommodations under RAS and HAP. They have been in and out and in and out. To lose their place on the list is just not acceptable. Quite frankly, it is another form of manipulation of the figures. I ask the Minister to take the action Deputy Barry has suggested.

On the cases I mentioned to the Minister, I will pass on the individuals' details. I thank Ms Hurley, who is beside the Minister, for contacting me. I will pass on the details of those cases. I reiterate, and ask for a response on, the issue of increasing the number of proactive outreach teams to go out and physically find empty properties. I could walk the Minister around Dún Laoghaire and point him to empty buildings. If we could get those buildings into use we would make a big difference. There is no reason we could not do that if the staff and resources were provided for local authorities. We could start going around and checking everything that is available. Teams could be physically walking around and looking at the empty properties. There could be a line which people could call if they see such properties. I am sure everybody here gets calls asking why certain properties are sitting empty. We could find and identify these things. We should then proactively approach the owners and find out what is going on. We should see whether we can get them into use. Some we could get into use just by doing that, in other cases we may need new legislation on compulsorily legislation or other measures. Whatever we need to do, we need to get those properties in use. I would like a response on that.

On the local issue of the Shanganagh development and without pointing fingers, in my opinion there is politics going on which is slowing this down. I ask that we move beyond the politics. The way to stop the ping pong between Departments and the councils - with political parties in between - is to get the representatives from all the parties on the council, local Deputies and the officials from the Minister's Department and those from the local authority who actually make the decisions together in a room and go through the issues and blockages that need to be overcome in order to get work on that site moving. We need to know where the problem lies. Everybody is blaming everybody else. That could be resolved if we could get people together in the room. Indeed, Senators could also be involved. One of them is present at this meeting. There is no doubt, and no room for politicking, about it: we have to get straight answers from all concerned as to what is going on, what the problems are and how we can overcome them. That is a direct appeal. We could do that.

I would not mind it if also on the agenda for that meeting was the issue of affordable housing, what affordability will actually mean in our area and how we are going to deliver affordable housing. I do not really see how we are going to deliver affordable housing because of the way the market is at present. We are supposed to be having it in Cherrywood and possibly in Shanganagh but there are real questions about how that is actually going to happen. I am making a serious solution-oriented appeal not to be politicking with the issue but to actually go through the nuts and bolts of how we can make that happen.