Thomas Gould (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
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I accept what Mr. Moynihan has said. Where I live on Cathedral Road in Cork, there are three beautiful homes within 100 yd. It would be possible to go in and hang up a coat. The people who own those houses are in nursing homes and will never come out. It is a sin. The person in the nursing home is not getting any benefit from their home. The lights are set to come on at 8 p.m. and they are on for four hours. The heating comes on for a couple of hours. At the same time, we have families who are homeless. No one is benefiting.

Further to the point Ms Murphy made earlier, to try to get these houses into play the Government needs to think outside the box. Mr. Moynihan made a point about the fear factor of people trying to take their homes. I hear that from people in Cork. What Mr. Reid of the Sue Ryder Foundation described is what we would love to see rolled out. We have a very popular scheme where I come from called the Solas Apartments. It is a brilliant scheme. We could fill it ten times over, but the problem is there are not enough of them.

In Barrett's Buildings, Roche's Buildings and Madden's Buildings in Cork, there are smaller properties of one-bedroom. At the time, 20 or 30 years ago, they were probably brilliant because older people were all put together. There are no services with them. We are dropping elderly people, many of them with health issues or disabilities, into old houses that have not been retrofitted or anything and they are left there. Instead, we need to get to what Mr. Reid is proposing.