Seán Canney (Galway East, Independent)
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The next big issue or crisis is housing. What has been a housing crisis will be compounded by the fact that we will probably have 80,000 or 100,000 - those figures have been bandied about - more people who will need housing as a matter of urgency over the next 12 months. How do we deal with that and the existing shortfall? In my book it could be a case of taking out some of the processes that exist at the moment and getting on with building, as opposed to having processes which mean it takes between five to seven years for a project to get off the ground, and bringing in emergency measures to allow us to get to the stage where we are building and putting in infrastructure, such as water and sewerage, in places where it is needed. That will take money and resources. Are we in a position to front-load our national development plan starting now, and not just projects that might be delivered over time but putting up buildings to house people so that they can live in a humane way? What are Professor McQuinn's thoughts on that?