Joanna Tuffy (Dublin Mid West, Labour)

Why is the assessment of housing need so old? Surely this should be updated at least yearly. I am sure there are more than the 43,600 to which the Minister of State refers. The reply referred to 9,000 housing starts in 2007. From my experience as a councillor, I know this to be a meaningless statistic because it has no relationship to the houses built and allocated to people on the housing list each year. The record of the Government on housing over the past 11 years has been abysmal. The National Economic and Social Forum had a target of some 10,000 each year to get rid of waiting lists. That has never happened.

I dealt with someone last year who had been on the housing list for eight years. She lived in the most dire conditions imaginable and was suicidal. I do not want to give details but it was a situation that one would not believe. This is the kind of story that representatives come up against. People are on housing lists for years and we are throwing money away on the private rental supplement. The Government policy has been to rely on the private market to solve problems. In years gone by there was more emphasis on building social housing, which is the key.

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