Ruth Coppinger (Dublin West, Anti-Austerity Alliance) | Oireachtas source

On 13 June, the Taoiseach wrote to Jean-Claude Juncker about the impact of the EU rules on public investment. He said there was a significant threat to the ability to fund major projects in housing, transport and water. Despite this, the Government is not seeking any derogation from those rules. Why not? Why is the new Minister with responsibility for housing going to the European Commission and saying a housing committee, which met for nine weeks and interviewed many witnesses has said social housing is hampered in particular by the application of domestic and EU fiscal rules and that the financing of social housing by the State is restrained by the EU fiscal rules? The Minister for Finance, Deputy Noonan, said money is not the issue, but our ability to spend it. We have €5.4 billion in ISIF that we are not able to spend on social and affordable housing. The Minister should be going to Europe demanding either a derogation from the rules or saying we will breach the rules to house our homeless.

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