Michael D Higgins (Galway West, Labour)

That is its mark, aim and achievement in government.

We have explicitly stated that we will put an end to the sale of State land. To those who ask how they are to know the difference between one party and another in government, it is in this motion. If one wants to imagine nothing can be done about housing speculation or the market, then one can have more of the same misery. If one wants a change, then one changes the Government's components.

The Government has failed in housing provision. In doing so, it has torn the heart out of the economy and destabilised society. Those on the left know that one never speaks about the house one lives in as only an asset. It is a home. The absence of a good, secure and comfortable home has effects on one's partner, children and neighbours. Imagine our State saying the speculators must be rewarded but will not guarantee the right to a home. That is some Republic. The principle of the right to a home must be accepted. It does not mean the Government is required to provide everyone with a home tomorrow morning. Instead we should look to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights that states it should be progressively realised. While not all builders are speculators, there is that small speculative clique which hoards lands near cities. It knows it is always safe with Fianna Fáil and even safer with the Progressive Democrats, which will take State assets and transfer all to them. Stealing from the public for the benefit of the few.

Historians will come to write about this period and ask how we used the fruits of economic growth. They will write of people whispering about the number of houses they own. No longer in the Republic is it a matter of having a roof over one's head but how many one has managed to acquire with tax benefits. It is a question of how many properties one has acquired on the blood of those whose likelihood of having a roof over their heads one has, by one's actions, put out of reach. That is the Government's Republic. The housing crisis has not only torn the heart out of the economy and destroyed communities, it has dashed young people's hopes of owning a home.

Deputy Gilmore proposes a proper regulated public and private rental sector, social housing for those who cannot afford it and affordable housing to be provided through reforms on land acquisition. In the miserable society we live in, newspapers are sold by suggesting it is a social success that a former corporation house has broken the €500,000 barrier or that a house in the Republic has passed the €1 million barrier. At a reception several years ago, a Secretary General boasted to me, "I never thought I would live to see my children buying houses for €500,000 in this country." After a lifetime in the public service, this was the extent of the moral vision of this miserable git. The truth is that everything from health, social life community, good planning is affected by one's home.

The Government surrendered to the speculative clique in the building industry on Part V of the Planning Act. Deputy Carey should return to the Chamber to explain why he finds our proposal on this unimaginative. Maybe he will tell us the terms of the Government's surrender where they claimed working people could not live alongside those whose aspiration is to live in gated communities. The Government will have created a society where people who cannot afford to buy their own houses will be on one side of the street. Those taking the blood money from their 20 or so houses will be living behind their electronic gates, protected against the people they are supposed to be living with in communities. The Government will have done all this in its Republic.

If this is ever to change, it will mean removing the Progressive Democrats from office. It is the party that represents those who want to put their private hospitals on the grounds of public hospitals. They who want to sell State sites owned by CIE and other State agencies. It is the party of the miserable Minister of State at the Department of Finance who stands with an auctioneer's hammer in his hand, declaring "everything is up for sale". Everything is up to be robbed from the public when it comes to the Progressive Democrats. Builders know that Fianna Fáil, with its own slick mohair inheritance from the building industry, will always facilitate a conversation with a Minister.

In the time of the greatest economic growth in the State's history, has social protection been extended? A home is the security to which a child returns after school. It is the place where the elderly spend the remaining days of their lives. The Government now requires them to sell their homes to go into nursing homes.

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