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

I would like to hear from the Minister of State about the problem the Government has with taking on board what we are asking for. I have never heard a convincing argument from that side of the House about why we should not and cannot do that. It is not that we want to take political potshots and accuse the Minister of State of ideological this, that or the other. I simply cannot get my head around how the Government does not see this. We had denial for two and half years. Then, in recent months, finally, there has been an acknowledgement that we have a major problem. Of course the problem has been absolutely staring us in the face. It is spilling out onto the streets and it is a disaster. There are 50 families in south Dublin in cars; they do not even have emergency accommodation. It is an absolute disaster. Finally there is an awareness that we must do something. Is the Minister of State seriously telling us that we simply have to wait for the market, private investors and hedge funds? That simply will not happen.

The idea is that by putting the money into big public building programmes of local authority housing now we would see multiple benefits. Can the Minister of State explain why the Government has set its face against that? What is the problem? It was done before and it can be done again. No one else is going to do it.

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