Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister of State is obviously hitting the stone wall that is the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform. I would love to see some of the people in that Department sleep in a caravan that is draughty, wet and damp in midwinter. In order to help the Department of Public Expenditure, National Development Plan Delivery and Reform, which spends billions - and we hear announcements every day about thousands of millions of euros - I suggest that a needs analysis be carried out. In other words, each local authority should be asked how many caravans in its area are deficient. We could then go back and say that this is the finite limit of the problem, and we could sort it.

Would it possible to price around to see what a new one would cost? I cannot understand the fetish of buying ones we know are going to wear out faster. What is the cost of a new, standard trailer that is designed not for Ballybunion in the summer but for living in 365 days of the year? Let us base our price on that, not on some arbitrary figure that will not apply when the sums are done as to how the money will be spent. I do not know what the total budget for housing is but it runs to billions of euro, so the cost would be minor. As I said, if this were any other group in society, it would not be tolerated.

Will the Minister of State come to Galway? We could go to the temporary halting site in Carrowbrowne, for which the local authority that owns it has not had planning permission for 14 years. We could then go to Cúl Trá, where the lease is up and the site is totally overcrowded. Seeing is believing, and if the Minister of State could bring a few Department of public expenditure officials with him, that might be a help.