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

I am amazed at the infrequency of meetings of the social policy committee. I would have thought it would be meeting at least on a weekly basis and, frankly, in emergency session when it comes to what, by any standard, is a central matter of special policy, namely, the chronic and daily deteriorating situation in social housing provision. Today representatives from council estates in Dublin, Limerick and Cork complained to the European Commission about the abysmally unhealthy and completely inadequate quality of social housing in council estates in our biggest cities. The Taoiseach has gone out of his way to be the best boy in the European class when it comes to doing what Angela Merkel says, paying back bondholders and doing what the financial markets want him to do, but he is certainly not the best boy in the European class when it comes to the quality of social housing provision in Ireland if the case being pursued by these communities is anything to go by. Should the social policy committee not be meeting to discuss this issue and should the Taoiseach not be ashamed of his Government for its abysmal failure to address the social housing crisis?

There has been a considerable spin put on this issue. Last October the biggest social housing programme in the history of the State was announced. I have since been contacted by my local authority on an almost weekly basis to ask whether there is any additional money for social housing. but there is not one cent. Only 19 council houses will be built in Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown next year, even though 1,200 people joined the council's housing list last year, bringing the total to 5,200. In the period since I entered this Dáil, the average waiting time on a council housing list has increased from eight to 15 years. In other words, some people will never get a council house. I am dealing with families who are facing unbelievable situations. One man who was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer has been couch surfing for several weeks. He is an emergency case, but he has no idea when he will be housed. Another woman with two children, one of whom has special needs, has been homeless for the past year. She is moving from couch surfing to emergency accommodation which is not guaranteed from one week to the next. She does not even know where she will sleep tomorrow. She is No. 1 on the priority list, but the council cannot even state when she will be given a council house. Someone who is No. 100 or 150 on the list is looking at a wait of seven or eight years before being housed. Despite all of the announcements made last October, not one extra cent has been provided for the budget for social housing provision. That is just in one county. God knows what the situation is like in the rest of the country.

What is the social policy committee discussing, if not the provision of social housing during the greatest social housing crisis in the modern history of the State? Working class communities are going to the European Court of Justice because of the Government's failure to take this issue seriously. What is the committee doing? Is it going to discuss the social housing crisis and are we going to have real policy change when it comes to dealing with the social housing emergency?

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