Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Let me make the point so we are very clear. I will take every additional social and affordable housing unit that can be provided. I would make two points on Part V. Part V should be in addition to large volumes of local authority social housing and affordable housing output. When Part V was introduced, that is not what it was. It was instead of that because the State had dramatically withdrawn its own direct investment and output and Part V was to replace it but on a smaller scale. My point about Part V is, in and of itself, it does not produce integration. There are mixed tenure estates that have Part V in my constituency and they are well integrated but what I am saying is that there are also others. There are non-government organisations who represent some of the most disenfranchised people in our housing system who will tell the Minister of State that there are also cases where Part V can actually reinforce segregation. That is not an argument against Part V. It is an argument against assuming that putting a small percentage of lower income households into a majority middle- or higher income estate automatically introduces integration. It does not. It does sometimes and it does not other times. I like Part V because it gives us more social and affordable housing units but the integration needs to come elsewhere.

The big problem, however, is this. The Minister of State talked about how we need a mixture. My view is we need an income and employment mixture rather than automatically a tenure mixture. The Minister of State warned against overconcentration. The only category of people in our society whom we restrict at so-called overconcentration is lower income households. We do not do it in private housing. It is almost like there is an issue, and I am not accusing the Minister of State of this because I know the constituency he represents and where he comes from, but I hear Deputies in this Chamber regularly talk about overconcentrations of lower income households as if large numbers of working-class people living in the same place is always in itself a bad thing. Therefore, if the Minister of State were coming to us and saying that overconcentration should in all cases be a bad thing, of higher income groups, middle-income groups and lower income groups, and everything had to be mixed, that would be a different proposition. However, that is not what mixed tenure and the conversation about Part V and these two sections include and we are confusing two things. Part V is a mechanism to deliver more social and affordable homes. It is not a mechanism to tackle segregation or to promote integration. The Minister of State will know that from the varying experiences of people in our communities. What creates good integrated communities is when there is adequate infrastructure, amenities and support for communities to integrate whether they are mono tenure, mixed tenure, low income, mixed income, high income, etc.

The Minister of State’s response suggests that maybe we did not explain ourselves properly. This is not about being against Part V. It is being against the idea that having more than a small percentage of people on low incomes living in the same place is a bad thing or can produce segregation and it feeds a myth. How often has the Minister of State or I, or Deputies Boyd Barrett or O’Callaghan-----