Tony Gregory (Dublin Central, Independent)

I support this Bill which again draws attention to what should be a priority issue for the electorate in the upcoming general election. The breathtaking cost of housing and the massive ongoing price increases must be one of the great scandals of recent times. It is impossible to justify the present situation. Homelessness at a time of great affluence is a blot on this State, as are the increasing waiting lists for local authority housing.

The irony is that the one measure agreed in this House that might have gone some way to relieve the housing crisis was the Part V arrangement in the Planning and Development Act 2000, which provided for 20% of all housing developments to be set aside for social and affordable housing and that it would be an integrated part of each scheme. The irony was that it was a Fianna Fáil Minister who introduced the measure. At the time I was almost impressed with the former Minister, Deputy Noel Dempsey, or whoever it was who came up with the progressive policy. We did not have long to wait until we saw Fianna Fáil in its true colours.

Once the builders and developers resisted the Part V arrangement, the writing was on the wall for it. Fianna Fáil very quickly capitulated to its builder and developer paymasters and produced the watered down version instead. This let the builders off the hook and thousands of houses and apartments which would have come on stream never materialised. That change represented the worst betrayal of all those who cannot afford the unaffordable prices of houses today.

The profiteers and racketeers in house prices and development land values won the day just as surely as they won when they corrupted local authority councillors in the litany of scandals that we see before the tribunals. The handful of billionaires who control the bulk of development land in the Dublin region must have felt very reassured that Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats can always be relied on to support their scandalous exploitation of people trying to provide homes for their families.

This issue never received the media attention it deserves. I welcome this debate because it puts this scandal before the public yet again. All of those who cannot afford a home at today's exploitative prices should examine this issue to determine in whose interests Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats work. It is certainly not in the interests of the PAYE sector, the homeless or those on local authority waiting lists. This is a clear and classic example of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats representing the interests of the rich, the big builders, developers and exploiters of the ordinary people of this country. This is one issue that I hope goes before the electorate in the forthcoming general election because if people see clearly what happened with the Part V arrangements and the implications for their families in their attempts to obtain homes of their own at reasonable prices, they will ensure that this coalition of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats is never again returned to this Houseto act in the interest of developer billionaires, which is precisely what it did on this occasion.

Tá sé scannalach gur bhris an Rialtas seo na hoibleagáidí a bhí leagtha amach aige i bPáirt V d'Acht 2000. I support the Bill.

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