Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

From what we have seen of it, the programme for Government makes it quite clear that what we have here is more of the same - more of what has gone on for the last eight or nine years. It was started by the Fianna Fáil-Green Government and continued by the Fine Gael-Labour Government, which was effectively the same. The document itself is vague, aspirational and uncosted. It is quite clear, however, that this is a continuation of austerity and a situation whereby low and middle-income families have been effectively disadvantaged by this and previous Governments. Unfortunately, this position will continue into the Thirty-second Dáil.

I want to compliment all the right to water and right to change campaigners. Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets to oppose metering. They fought Irish Water in their estates and forced a retreat both on Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael. Indeed, we are on the cusp of a famous victory.

All I will say to those campaigners is well done and stay organised opposing the water meters. We will see an end, once and for all, to these charges.

This document is a disappointment for all those involved in the housing and homelessness area. There is no declaration of a housing emergency and absolute vagueness as to how it will deal with the issue. Today, 500 families face repossession orders in the courts. That is not to mention the 6,000 people, including nearly 2,000 children, who are in emergency accommodation. We have no emergency local authority house building programme, while housing provision has been effectively privatised. Nationally, there are well over 100,000 people on local authority waiting lists. In County Tipperary, there are more than 2,000 people on that list. We need a declaration of a housing emergency along with an emergency house building programme. This country was able to build up to 10,000 local authority houses annually between the 1960s and the 1980s. We should be able to do that and a lot more now, if the political will was there. Unfortunately, it is not.

We need to stop evictions. As I said earlier today, this Government, as well as the previous one, can do that by a simple instruction to Allied Irish Banks, Permanent TSB and the EBS. The people of this country own those banks. The Minister for Finance and the Taoiseach can instruct those banks from issuing repossession orders and evictions. They should do that immediately.

I hope the new Minister for Health will bring new and clear thinking to the health area. We certainly did not get it from the previous Minister or his predecessor. I am deeply disappointed the whole area of mental health did not get a Minister at senior level in Cabinet. It is an area which is significantly important. It has been a difficult area in my constituency when the Government closed the acute psychiatric unit at South Tipperary General Hospital. It now apparently wants to close the residential unit at Mount Sion in Tipperary town.

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