Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

What we are seeking is the inclusion of social and affordable housing in these projects. The Minister of State has assured us that they will be included, but they are not even listed. That is the point. If they are going to be front and centre in the context of this fund, they should appear on the list of projects. I am amazed - I am not really - that the Minister of State referred to PPPs. The legacy of public private partnerships in the area of housing is disastrous. As previous speakers indicated, people in the inner city have been left looking at empty buildings as a result of the use of such partnerships. I know that the Minister of State has an ideological aversion to anything to do with public investment or funding.

The private sector, however, has no interest in building anything. I have just come off Fingal County Council but recently I attended a presentation there. There are 13,000 planning permission applications in the council area but not one of them is being taken up in any serious way because of the logjam in the banks and because developers do not believe that they will get a return. The Government is looking to those in the private sector at a time when they have no interest.

By the way, there is nothing socialist about this; this is Keynesianism. This is what was done by the State in the 1930s and the 1970s in particular when the State had to step in. Socialism involves taking the wealth out of the hands of the tiny private elite and using it completely to solve the ills in society.

I suggested that the constituents of the Minister of State must be different from mine because I do not know how the Minister of State can leave his office and not have the issue of this fund front and centre of the agenda. By the way, this is taxpayers' money, not the Minister of State's money. This money was put in by workers for the pension timebomb etc. and now it is being used. The Government lost most of it in the bailout but there is a little left. The Government should at least try to solve the problems for the people who did not cause the crisis in the first place and who have been left without homes.

See this speech in context