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

The Government is living so far from reality that it might as well be in the outer stratosphere of a planet on the other side of the universe. Its definition of success is utterly perverse. If one defines success as looking after bankers and international speculators and lining the pockets of consultants and an army of spin doctors, then the Government is a spectacular success. However, if one's definition of success is the one that most ordinary people in this country have, which is to eliminate poverty and homelessness, provide a health service that keeps people safe and to provide real, meaningful jobs, this Government is a disastrous failure, and everybody knows it. The only people who are applauding this Government are the elites - the international financial elites, the bankers and the very wealthy. Ordinary people are suffering dreadfully.

The Government's policies are leading directly to the biggest homelessness and housing crises this State has seen. It is daily driving more people into poverty, particularly young and disabled people and people on low incomes with families. As a result of cuts in the health service, the Government is needlessly endangering the lives of sick people who need help, and it is either driving young people out of the country or into low paid, exploitative pretend jobs. They are not real jobs, just exploitative jobs. Meanwhile, it is enriching an army of consultants, speculators, bankers and the very wealthy in this country.

Let us consider homelessness and the housing crisis, which the Government clearly does not wish to discuss. The dishonesty of the Taoiseach this morning was absolutely staggering when he said he was worried about this issue and referred to reviews. For two and a half years Members on this side of the House have been pointing to the fact that the Government's policies are directly contributing to homelessness. The Government has done absolutely nothing while that crisis has got worse each day. It is not simply that the Government has other priorities; it is the Government's policies that are creating the crisis.

The rent allowance caps for Dublin and the urban centres are directly leading to people losing their homes and being forced into homeless accommodation. For example, a woman called Charlene, who was protesting with me outside the Dáil today, has five young children who go to school in Shankill, but for the last week she has been put into a hotel in Citywest, on the other side of the city. Each day she does not know whether she will be able to keep that hotel room and she must bring her children across the city to school in Shankill. Another example is Peter, a young man I spoke to today. He has mental illness problems but for three years he has been in homeless accommodation with drug users and people with chronic alcohol problems. There are tens of thousands of other people on housing waiting lists for ten to 14 years.

The Government has done nothing about this. In fact, it caused it. In July 2012, the Government produced a policy document which stated that the new policy would be to stop building council houses and rely on leasing arrangements with the private sector to provide housing. That has failed disastrously. Why do members of the Government not simply put up their hands and admit they were wrong? The journalists can check this. It was the policy document produced in 2012 by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government. This situation was not an accident, but a policy.

Similarly, why are rents rising? I disagree a little with Deputy Ross about the stress tests on the banks. I believe the banks will be found to be not too stressed. The reason is that it is the Government's policy to drive up the value of property and rents in order to restore the balance sheets of the banks. It is succeeding. The big corporate landlords are doing very well at present. They bought up property at bargain basement prices in the last two years and now property values, as well as rents, are going through the roof. The corporate landlord makes a fortune, the poor are made homeless and the banks are sorted yet again. Again, the banks are driving people into homelessness. In my view, that is a deliberate policy of the Government.

The health service is an unfolding catastrophe. The reason is that €1.8 billion has been taken out of the service, 6,000 staff have been lost and 2,500 beds have been removed from the service, while the Government plans to take another 7,000 staff out of the service this year and plans another €1 billion in cuts. Is it any wonder there are 370 people on trolleys in hospitals around the country as we speak? Is it any wonder that there are waiting periods of a year or two for important operations? It is the inevitable result of slashing jobs and spending in the health service. The Government is now going to compound the misery by charging people €800 or €1,000 per year for compulsory private health insurance, the only beneficiaries of which will be private health insurance companies. People will pay through the nose to have their lives endangered when they go into our hospitals. That is what is happening.

Only the private health care providers and insurance companies will benefit from this, but, of course, that is Fine Gael policy. It is always about the market, by which it means its mates in the corporate sector who see health, housing and just about every vital service that human beings need as an opportunity to make profit, not an opportunity to provide services and infrastructure for the human beings outside this House who are suffering the consequences of Fine Gael's policies.

Now, we have the Gateway scheme with the local authorities. This is like a wet dream for Fine Gael. The unemployed are being dragooned, under threat of having their social welfare taken from them, into low paid jobs in local authorities. These should be properly paid jobs. If those jobs must be done, people must be paid for doing them. We should not try to force people to do them for €20 on top of their dole. It is absolutely disgraceful and will lead to the displacement of real jobs. Of course, that is what Fine Gael has always wanted, but it is sickening in the extreme that the Labour Party is facilitating this. It is beyond belief.

In conclusion, I wish to respond to something the Taoiseach said today. The other thing the Government has not done is bring justice to many people in this State who have been crying out for it, because an injustice was done to them in which they lost loved ones or suffered terribly. Today the Taoiseach told the Dáil that he did not have the evidence from the Stardust families regarding the official findings for the reason the Stardust fire was started. He said he did not have that information.

That is not true. He was given the information. The first draft of the Coffey report which was never published stated there should be an investigation because they knew and had evidence to show - the families sent it to the previous Government and this Government - that the timeline for the start of the fire and its location were different from that stated in the official record and that it had started in the roof a considerable amount of time before it was claimed it had started in the alcove. The evidence is available and has been provided. Why does the Government not be honest? Why does the Taoiseach not meet the families and give them the committee of investigation for which they have so long asked and which he promised them before he took office? It is blah, blah, blah, blah, bullshit.

See this speech in context