Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

One would need great neck to make the claim the Minister of State has made that the Government is succeeding on the basic issue of housing. How many units of social housing did the Government promise, how many units did the NESC tell us were necessary and how many have been provided? This Government, which strongly represents the speculative mentality in regard to the building of homes, has provided only approximately one third of what was provided in the 1970s. Government back bench Members hopped up to tell us it was because of the return of migrants, the expansion of the population and other demographic factors. If that were all true, how can they then defend building only a third of the social housing compared to that provided in the 1970s? The Government has added a tissue of untruths to the debate.

The social and affordable housing that was promised has not been built. It continues to surprise me how the social partners are satisfied at being conned as to the numbers of social and affordable housing units being built. Some 40,000 affordable houses were promised by the Government but since 1999, it has only provided 3,000. One does not need to be a genius to work out that 3,000 subtracted from 40,000 is 37,000. As long as Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats are in government, there will never be a fundamental change in the legendary source of housing speculation and inflation of the price of building land. The All-Party Committee on the Constitution agreed on the implementation of changes that Deputy Gilmore proposed in his motion on acquiring land for housing. I am proud that the stamp of the Labour Party is on the motion. I congratulate Deputy Gilmore and other Labour Members who have supported it.

When the people will vote, they will know that the Progressive Democrats, when in government, will steal from the public what it does not own. It stands for the taking of public property and handing it to the private sector for speculative gain.

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