Peadar Tóibín (Meath West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish the new Minister good luck and sympathise with the Acting Chairman, Deputy Durkan, for having to listen to the last two Government speakers. I promise that I will not hurt his ears in such a manner. It sounds like Deputy Tom Barry took some bovine fertiliser home with him from the ploughing championships.

The housing situation in this country is in crisis - from mortgage distress to runaway rents to house purchases becoming ever more unaffordable to street homelessness. Hundreds of thousands of families are affected. Although the size of the problem is unprecedented, the ingredients are not. Since the 1980s, Governments have reduced the capital expenditure going into the housing stock and this has made a massive and long-term difference. Social housing was back on the agenda during the tiger years but, unfortunately, that was scuppered by the lobbying of the Government by private interests. One would think the idea of State provision of public housing was a radical one among those on the Government benches. It is not a radical idea. It is a sensible and long-term policy that has social, economic and commercial value. Many of our parents and grandparents would not have been able to access homes but for the provision of large-scale social housing in the early part of the previous century.

The size of the crisis is breathtaking. In my county of Meath, approximately 450 people presented themselves as homeless to the local authority last year. That figure will be approximately 700 people this year. There are approximately 4,000 people on the housing waiting list in the country. Last year, Meath County Council was in a position to provide three new properties in the county. This is an unbelievable situation. The majority of the people on the housing waiting lists and those who are homeless in Meath are so because of the votes of Fine Gael and Labour Party Deputies from the county over the past three years - the people who are meant to represent them.

The crisis has been exacerbated by a major rent supplement rate and rent mismatch. Right now, the upper rate for rent supplement in Meath is €650 per month. One will not get a three-bedroom house in much of the county for less than €1,000 per month. The emergency accommodation for the whole year in Meath is gone.

We should translate these numbers and statistics into human experience. Every morning people in Meath and elsewhere have no idea where they or their children will sleep that night. Every day parents get their kids ready to go to school but they have no idea if they will be able to bring their kids back to their home. I have heard of parents who are languishing in emergency accommodation try to convince their kids that they are on some kind of special holiday in order to keep some level of morale alive in the home.

A good home is the foundation of everything. If one does not have a good home, one does not have stability and good health and one will not be able to educate one's children properly. As a father, never mind as a public representative, I cannot get my head around this Government's inaction on this issue.

The idea of a stimulus has become intellectually unfashionable within the parties opposite, despite the fact it is a key component of recovery. The truth is that we have a severe humanitarian housing crisis in this country. When one hears of humanitarian crises, one tends to think of developing countries or, as they were known, Third World countries. It is the case that tens of thousands of skilled workers are languishing on the dole. It is also the case that we have the necessary capital in the Strategic Investment Fund. Put them all together and one has a stimulus plan which would develop the necessary housing to fulfil the needs of these families and one would have a jobs programme which would put people back to work and which would have a major impact on the development of the country. All that is missing is a Government that gives a damn about this issue.

What we have in the Sinn Féin policy is a way to repair the damage that has been done by this Government and previous Governments. It sets out a sensible way to achieve these policies which will effectively deal with the housing crisis in the long term.

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