Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

How a person with such an agenda can ever be expected to deliver on social and affordable housing, the implementation of an environment-first waste management policy and empowering people through a reformed and inclusive system of local government is beyond comprehension?

I specifically wish to address the Minister's intentional mishandling of housing, waste management and local government. I cannot recollect the last time I heard the Minister address the housing issue. Housing has been left in the hands of a Minister of State who also has responsibility to another Department. The Government cares more for the rights of private property than it does for the rights of its citizens. Its housing policy appeals to the same constituency served by the property section of The Irish Times, for whom there is no problem of affordable housing, who will never experience the housing crisis or be in need of social housing. A glance through those property pages, or those of any other paper, make the claims by the Minister and his lackeys that there is no affordability problem utterly laughable and indicative of how far out of touch the Government is regarding the hardships and difficulties faced by people.

Of all that the developer-friendly Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government has done since taking office, the changes, as Deputy Boyle mentioned, to the Planning and Development Act 2000 were the most inexplicable and inexcusable. That action represented a capitulation to those developers whose greed was offended by the necessity to have 20% social and affordable housing in all developments. It represented a capitulation to those who would ostracise a working class family that moves into a development because they see it as somehow infecting their estate. Sinn Féin rejects this retrogressive attitude because the best housing model is that which involves a social mix.

That is the same agenda that created the vast sprawling ghettos which exiled the working class to cement deserts on the edge of Dublin and other cities, with no facilities, no jobs and no hope. This attitude led to the scourge of drugs in working class areas, particularly in Dublin.

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