Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)

Given today's launch of the Green Paper on Local Government, one hopes the primary outcome of local government reform will be an improvement of standards at local level. If we consider the Minister of State's track record in this regard, we will realise it has been an abysmal failure. Is he aware that only one inspection took place in his own area of Cork, where over 9,000 houses were registered in 2006? Is this acceptable in his own bailiwick in Cork? In Cork city in my constituency, where approximately 6,000 houses were registered in 2006, 780 houses were inspected, half of which failed. The houses that failed, which were featured on a "Prime Time Investigates" programme, were not inspected at a later date.

When I raised this matter on 23 February prior to the "Prime Time Investigates" programme, the Minister gave a completely disingenuous answer in the House to the effect that inspection rates had actually increased. They have not. What the Minister of State did was focus on the narrow context of inspection rate increases from one year to another. However, the registration rate in the two years in question grew several-fold and the inspection rate collapsed to 7%. It is therefore a nonsense for the Minister of State to claim in this Chamber that the inspection rates are 33% and 44% when in fact they have collapsed.

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