Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)

A shocking 96,000 people are on housing waiting lists, many for as long as ten years. Most of the people on the list believe that at the end of their unacceptable wait they will get a council home with proper standards and a housing authority that is accountable to the public in terms of the condition of that housing. They do not realise that the Minister ended those hopes in June with his proposals on outsourcing social housing to private landlords' leasing arrangements and now with the new proposals on the banks, they may even have bankers as landlords. This makes no sense in light of the rental revenue lost to the State and the stupidity of handing over €600,000 per year to private landlords.

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