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

The reason I was protesting is that, for six years, since I was elected to this House, I have been pleading with the Government to return to the provision of local authority housing. For five of those years, I got blanked completely, and the list in Dún Laoghaire went from about 3,000 to about 6,000, with people now waiting 18 years on the list. I have people coming in to me every week with their kids, literally crying about having no place to live. That is why I am protesting. If the Minister can solve the problem, I will be a very happy person. It is not out of a desire to have an unnecessary political argument. I just want a solution for the desperate people who are coming in every week.

What I cannot get, and I hardly have time to ask the question, is the information on how many of these will be local authority housing, as opposed to housing from the approved housing bodies or leases. Let me put it this way. Of the 8,000 houses, let us say I can convince the council that 2,000 of those should be council houses, will the Minister give Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown the money to take 2,000 of the 8,000 houses in Cherrywood into public ownership as local authority houses?

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