Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)

What does one say to a young mother when she approaches one for local authority housing having been told she must wait seven years? What does one say to a mother with two children under the age of two who is living in a shack in the back garden of a house with 12 occupants? What does one say to her in the knowledge that the waiting list for housing has trebled in Dún Laoghaire over the past ten years during a massive economic boom? How does one relate to her that councillors of a party in Government, Fianna Fáil, voted against the development of local authority housing a couple of miles from where she is living?

Does one tell her the council cannot afford to buy land while the Progressive Democrats, the other party in Government, wants to give back €2.5 billion in stamp duty? Does one say to her that the Minister of State with responsibility for housing, Deputy Noel Ahern, did not even show up at a debate on the issue this evening? Does one tell her that one of the finest entrepreneurs and builders, Mick Wallace, is saying the Government does not have its act together on social housing? It is hard to look such a person in the eye and tell her she will be waiting seven years for a house in spite of an unprecedented economic boom.

One could say to this lady that State lands earmarked for development five years ago are lying idle, in spite of a promise that social housing units would be built there within months. One could say that those responsible for the tens of thousands of one-off houses in the country do not pay a penny towards social and affordable housing because they are exempt from doing so under Part V of the Planning and Development Act 2000. One could tell her the Minister of State with responsibility for these matters filleted the Act, which promised a great dawn for social and affordable housing.

One must say to the woman that we need to build 10,000 social housing units per year. One must say to her that there are many good ideas, given that developers in London are building houses for €100,000. In Dún Laoghaire, however, one cannot put a down-payment on a house that costs under €500,000. One must say to her that the Government needs to be changed if she is to have a decent chance of having a home built within seven years, let alone three, to keep her safe and secure.

The way we build homes and the building regulations need to be changed. We are falling behind the rest of Europe in this regard. If one wants to build a house tomorrow in Northern Ireland, it must have a condensing boiler and it must have higher standards of insulation than those which obtain here. We are belatedly introducing the EU building performance directive, but according to standards that are much inferior to those that apply abroad. Even the most pedestrian house built today will receive a "C" rating under the system proposed and we therefore need to improve the building regulations as much as anything else. We need a change of Government if we are to deliver the housing required by the aforementioned woman and her children.

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