Gerry Adams (Louth, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

It contains proposals to rebuild the economy, renew society and to repair the damage done to the community by the Government and by Fianna Fáil before it. It contains a proposal, which I commend to the Taoiseach, to lift the burden on low and middle income households by scrapping domestic water charges. It tells him how to do this and how to pay for it.

However, I want to concentrate on another crisis, the crisis in housing. Our budget proposals include a proposal to build 6,000 new homes over the next 18 months and it tells the Taoiseach how this should be funded. I do not know if the Taoiseach has noticed but there are 20,000 applications for housing in Dublin City Council, which is an increase of 3,000 since last year. The real number is higher but this particular Dublin council list verifies that all of these citizens have had their need for housing established by the council. More than one third are living in overcrowded conditions or have particular medical or welfare needs. Some 1,136 applicants are homeless in this city, and that is repeated throughout this State.

In addition to the main waiting list, 5,645 tenants are already living in social housing but are seeking to transfer because one quarter of them are living in overcrowded conditions and others need to move out of flats because they do not have wheelchair access. Some 100 of these people need to change their accommodation because of changed family circumstances. In my constituency, there are more than 5,000 on the housing list.

What is the Government's plan to deal with this ongoing crisis? The ESRI has called on the Government to make a major investment in social housing in the next week's budget instead of making the tax cuts it has been promising. Will the Taoiseach accept our proposition? If he has not had the chance to read it, I would commend it to him. Will he accept the proposition from the ESRI to invest in social housing instead of making the tax cuts the Government has been proposing?

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