Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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Thank you, Chairman. I will be brief. We are in the middle of a housing emergency. We are the committee that has oversight over housing. It seems simple to me that if we do not build houses as quickly as we possibly can, the emergency will continue to get worse. That is why we are tabling amendments. Deputy McAuliffe made a comment about the State being back into building houses. In Cork city the State is building no houses. Cork City Council is getting private developers to build estates that it is then purchasing off them to deliver them. Where I live in Gurranabraher and where I come from in Knocknaheeny the estates were directly built by the local authorities with funding from central government. That is what we need to get back to now: actually building houses ourselves. I will not hold up the meeting any more, but that is the only way to tackle the housing emergency.