Erin McGreehan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank Mr. Alford.

My question for DFI is on housing policy. Each local authority has put out its plan for the next couple of years. I was looking through the service provision plans for housing for the elderly, for people with disabilities and for affordable housing that were drawn up for some of the counties I am familiar with. It was very obvious that everything is being siloed off. There is a development earmarked "elderly-disability" and another "affordable housing", and they miles apart. Has there been an examination of those plans? Have they been proofed and looked at? Have councils even got the ability to look at this? Do they see that putting everyone in one estate, that is, into single houses in one area, is not the same as putting them in among families, neighbours and their peers? We have all this money and these plans but we are still, in a smaller way, potentially siloing people off as different when they certainly are not. They just need different types of housing in the middle of everyone else.