Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I wish to share time with Deputy Joe Costello.

This motion, which will be voted on in 15 minutes, is not about bricks and mortar. It is about hope — hope for a better place to live, for a better future and hope for children. I have been very disappointed at the Government's response to what I had hoped would be a non-partisan motion in this House. I am disappointed at the amendment that the Government has tabled and at the lack of conviction on the part of the Government in dealing with this problem.

With my colleagues, Deputy Joe Costello, Councillor Emer Costello and the local Labour Party representative, Claire O'Regan, I visited O'Devaney Gardens and Dominick Street and spoke with local residents there. At the invitation of my colleagues, Deputy Mary Upton and Councillor John Gallagher, I also intend to visit St. Michael's Estate in the near future.

What I learned is that hope is what these regeneration projects represented for the communities in St. Michael's Estate, O'Devaney Gardens, Infirmary Road, Dominick Street and Sean MacDermott Street. Hope is what kept them working so tirelessly to forge a vision of the kind of place in which they wanted their children to grow up. Regeneration is about more than badly-needed new homes. It is about a fresh start for communities which, over the years, have accumulated more than their fair share of burdens. It is about an end to the segregation of social and private housing and about saying goodbye to the days when apartment blocks or housing estates were built without a thought for the families who would live in them — without shops, community centres or space for children to play. These regeneration projects, designed in partnership with residents, promised not only new homes, but new community facilities, crèches and businesses. They promised a different future.

Now the hopes of these communities are fading along with those unfulfilled promises. The Labour Party has laid this motion before the House to attempt to rescue the abandoned regeneration projects and with them, the hopes of their communities. These regeneration projects and others like them around the country are an urgent national priority. Some of the plans currently on hold have been urgent for up to a decade. With every year that passes, these flat complexes and estates sink further into decline. Ironically, the regeneration process itself has speeded up this process. Families moved out to let the developers in, but when the developer never came, drug dealers, drinking parties and gangs moved into the abandoned blocks instead. For example, there are four empty apartment blocks in O'Devaney Gardens, which were de-tenanted in order to begin demolition and re-development. Now they are standing derelict, an eyesore for remaining residents, a danger for local kids and a magnet for anti-social behaviour.

If the regeneration projects are left to languish at this stage, starved of investment because no one knows what is going to happen to them and haemorrhaging tenants, the residents of these estates will find themselves living in conditions that are worse than before the regeneration process began. As one mother told me on Monday last, 18 months after residents were promised a transformed neighbourhood and the homes of their dreams, there is nothing in O'Devaney Gardens for kids to play with except bits of rubble. Will another generation of children grow up knowing nothing except the failed policies of the past, with decaying blocks of flats, no green space or safe place to play, and more and more of their own neighbourhood becoming a no-go area? That is what is at stake here tonight.

We in Dáil Éireann cannot let another generation of children grow to maturity in housing that is not fit for them or their families. After all, what is our national wealth for, if not to improve the future of the nation's children? This is as true in the boom times as it is in this more sober economic climate. In fact, I would argue that at a time when talk is of cutbacks and hard decisions, it is even more incumbent on us to ensure that our collective wealth is used to protect those who stand to suffer the most.

Even during the boom years, it is clear that the trickle down of wealth did not travel very far. It is disturbing that in a country which built over 600,000 new houses and apartments in the past decade, 44,000 households find themselves on local authority housing waiting lists.

The construction boom fuelled our economic growth for the past five years sending unprecedented amounts of money in stamp duty and VAT receipts flowing into the Exchequer. Meanwhile in the private sector, big developers were the biggest winners in a property bubble that kept prices high. Yet it seems the profits of the construction boom stopped at the thresholds of the neighbourhoods which needed them most. There are still pockets of the 1980s in our 21st-century capital city. It is a particularly cruel blow to the residents of these complexes that, despite regeneration plans that were so long in the making, they should be the first victims of a downturn in profits in the construction industry.

Public private partnerships were lauded as the risk-free solution to public housing provision. Instead, it turns out that all the risk has been borne by Dublin City Council and the residents of St. Michael's Estate, O'Devaney Gardens, Infirmary Road, Dominick Street andSeán MacDermott Street while the developer, Mr. McNamara, was able to walk away without consequence. With respect, Mr. McNamara does not have to live in O'Devaney Gardens or Dominick Street. He does not have to look out every morning onto empty flats in a state of half-demolition or worry about where his children are playing. The residents of these complexes have to live with the consequences of the collapse of this PPP every day just as they have been living with the consequences of poor housing and planning for years.

However, we are not here tonight to argue over who is to blame. We are here to find a solution so that these regeneration projects can go ahead as soon as possible. This is why we are asking the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to remove the developer from the remaining projects. These regeneration schemes are simply too urgent to be tied up for years in the courts.

Second, we are calling on the Minister to take direct responsibility for funding and delivering the five social and affordable housing projects in question. These regeneration projects need to be undertaken regardless of whether a private developer is willing to take them on or not. The future of these communities and the children growing up in them cannot be dependent on the whims of the housing market.

Years of hard work and commitment by the residents of these communities has gone into creating a vision of what their neighbourhoods could and should be. They have fulfilled their part of the bargain. It would be unconscionable to squander that effort and goodwill and leave these projects to gather dust. Now is the time for the Government to take the responsibility which has been bestowed on them by the people and deliver the homes and the social and physical regeneration that these areas so desperately need.

Our motion is not about party politics. It is about finding a solution to the collapse of these PPP agreements so the homes promised to the residents of St. Michael's Estate, O'Devaney Gardens, Infirmary Road, Dominick Street and Seán MacDermott Street can be built. It is about rectifying the mistakes of the past — mistakes whose consequences we see every day in all of our constituencies. Most of all, it is about restoring hope and acting on the principle that all of the nation's children deserve the best future we can offer them. This is why I ask for support for this motion and for the Government to withdraw the mealy-mouthed amendment it has tabled.

See this speech in context