Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

They did in their hats stand by us.

This leads to the issue of being under control. There are 130,000 people on the housing list. I listened to Members talk about the television programme they saw last night. I had three different groups in my office this morning in connection with housing before I left for Dublin. One person was a woman whose husband is paralysed and in a wheelchair and they have five children. All she wants is for a shower to be installed in her house, but the Government is cutting back on its expenditure in that area. There was another couple who have children and they were promised a house, but it was taken from them because they were told they did not have the funds to purchase the house that they had hoped to buy. The third case involved a young fellow who was in the care of the State but on reaching the age of 18 there was not a proper plan in place for him. He is 21 years of age now and he has been living in a stable in County Laois for the last three months. Unscrupulous landlords are renting stables. Three stables are being rented and none of them has a toilet or a water supply; there is a shared facility for the three of them. However, the Minister, Deputy Joan Burton, sees it fit to pay rent supplement on that substandard accommodation. If the Minister examined what she was doing in terms of the rental supplement, she would pay for proper accommodation that is available and not force people to live in a stable.

Those three groups were in my office at 9 o'clock this morning. We as Deputies are picking up the legacy of the homelessness situation created by the Labour Party Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, who is not getting his act together to deal with the housing issue, and the Minister for Social Protection who is responsible for the rental supplement. What did the Minister for Public Expenditure and Control, Deputy Howlin, say today? He said that is a matter for the next Government, that it will be a priority for the next Government, but it is a priority for the people here and now. We have the homelessness situation and the lack of house building over which the Government has stood idly by during the past five years when it could have used good funds instead of paying higher interest rates to German people to put money into AIB. It would have been better off investing money in housing in Ireland.

I would also point to the addressing the jobs issue, which the Government promised, but every time those in Government talk about it they ignore the fact that one of the reasons the number of those in receipt of jobseeker's allowance has reduced is because the Government has ensured that most of them had to take a one way ticket to Sydney, Perth or to other countries. It has a policy of forcing young people to leave the country.

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