Bernard Allen (Cork North Central, Fine Gael)

The Minister has talked a good talk, but his performance since taking office has not lived up to his view of his ability. He is behaving like Superman when his performance is more akin to Mighty Mouse.

Since taking office, the Minister for the Environment and Local Government has stated he wants to increase the limits of political donations. Why would he not do so as he is the recipient of the highest level of donations in 2002? He launched a national spatial strategy to almost no effect. The Government's decentralisation programme not only ignored but seemed to be contrary to the ethos of the national spatial strategy, which was to create self-sustaining hubs of activity. Instead of working to reduce pollution in the atmosphere, he has championed incineration and is beginning to see his wishes implemented, with incinerators going ahead in Counties Meath and Cork and about to go ahead in Waterford and Ringsend, Dublin.

What stands out as the greatest failures of the Minister, Deputy Cullen, are housing and the attempted introduction of the proposed electronic voting system, which we will deal with in more detail tomorrow. The continued debt burden being forced on young people and the marginalisation of those on housing waiting lists and those who cannot even go on the waiting list must be condemned. The Minister has ignored the people. He decided to eliminate the first-time buyer's grant. He stood idly by as the Minister for Finance, Deputy McCreevy, raised the VAT rate on houses by 1% and he has allowed the drip feed of land for development to continue while prices move more out of reach of first-time buyers.

The Minister promised that a commission would look at the land holding in Dublin and report before the end of 2003. We have not had sight nor sound of that report in spite of the promises. It is a short-term strategy that cares little for the young, who will be Ireland's future. The Minister is creating a generation of debt-ridden people who cannot afford to take risks to open up businesses in the open market. This is an anti-enterprise Minister and Government.

The introduction of electronic voting, if it is allowed, will be a sad day for Irish democracy. People will no longer be able to see his or her vote being cast and counted and we must trust the system which uses two separate types of computers and has major question marks over its reliability, accuracy, transparency and security. This is not a system that the electorate has looked for, but one which the Minister is thrusting upon us. He has failed to prove the system. He stifled debate by keeping reports under wraps and has seen to it that the committee finished its deliberations prematurely, thereby allowing the money to be committed, and by insisting on using scaremongering tactics such as that somebody opposed to the system is either a Luddite or a crackpot. The people can see through this and would like the Minister to be honest for a change. He must add the verifiable paper audit trail to the system immediately, but more on that tomorrow.

The system of local government has been done untold damage by the Minister. He has forced local authorities to increase service charges in line with the Government's tax by stealth policies. He knew he could save money by forcing local government to find more finance locally for the same service. The double blow is that when people pay more for the same service, they blame local authorities and local politicians and this creates a bad image of local government in general. He decided also that development levies should be jacked up to fund local government and the cost of services to rezone land had to be diverted to pay for the cost of benchmarking. The Taoiseach and the Minister have been great at promising to do something about the housing crises. They have promised one-off housing guidelines, with which councillors could not agree.

The Taoiseach promised 10,000 houses under Sustaining Progress but 12 months later, not a single house has been designed or built. It was proposed to have constitutional change in the housing area. The committee on the Constitution has talked about taxing land holding, but anybody who knows Fianna Fáil and the tactics used in the past seven years knows that this is another false promise before another election. The Minister has ensured that demand continues to outstrip supply at an unsustainable rate. Perhaps someone else in Fianna Fail has what it takes to come to grips with this Department. The Fine Gael Party supports this motion.

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