Joan Collins (Dublin South Central, Independent) | Oireachtas source

As I do not have too much time, I will cut to the chase. We know exactly the reason this debate is being held today in the Dáil. We know that the housing crisis continued under the Minister's watch although I would agree entirely that this started under the Government of Fianna Fáil. It is the result of a neoliberal politics which depended on developers to build homes and that proved unsustainable.

Everybody has been getting these e-mails from Focus Ireland, Simon and the housing and homeless campaign. They all are saying the same things they were saying a year and a half ago, that we need to call a housing emergency. That must be called today. I would like to hear the Minister say at the end of this debate that we have a national emergency, that we will bring in necessary emergency legislation on housing and that we will sit down immediately with the credit unions to talk to them about the €3 billion to €5 billion they are prepared to put into local authority housing. The Minister should not shake his head. There is €5 billion sitting there waiting to be handed to the Government to do this.

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