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

The amendments we have tabled, and the amendment from Deputy O'Callaghan, are trying to do similar things. The Minister will probably say they could be done anyway and that the Bill as drafted will allow for all of this. Our point is it will also allow for the Minister not to do it. In the areas we are specifying, we do not believe it is an option not to do it.

I will repeat an instance of my own experience as a rookie councillor, which is significant because the development is happening now. It is with regard to Cherrywood, which is the biggest residential development in the country. I remember it very well as I had just been elected to the council. It was in 2009 and we were doing the strategic development zone for Cherrywood. I naïvely and innocently suggested we should try to establish how much of the development of 8,000 units should be social and affordable housing. I was told we could not discuss it and that it was not a planning matter. Things have changed because of a massive crisis and the Minister has handed me a note, and I appreciate it, about the needs assessment. I will genuinely look at it.

I am not speaking about the Minister specifically but over a period of time, we have really messed up on failing to recognise the particular importance of delivering social and affordable housing. We have also failed the Traveller community in terms of the provision of Traveller-specific and culturally-appropriate accommodation. We have really failed, and the Government may rue this failure significantly after the weekend, the disability community on many levels. People are absolutely raging and their anger at the failure of successive Governments may give the Government a big shock over the weekend.

Well-being has been referred to already. If the Minister was to ask young people these days what was one of their biggest concerns, they would say it was mental health and well-being.