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

Sometimes people power and action in the real world clarify what political or media debate in this House obscures. That is the contrast we are drawing regarding the Minister's explanation, as manifest in this Bill, for why there is a problem in providing the famous supply of affordable housing that we urgently need to deal with the crisis. Our explanation and, more importantly, the explanation of those who are occupying the NAMA building, which is seven or eight storeys high and could accommodate hundreds of people, is that it is in public ownership and has been sitting empty for years. That is the contrast.

What this amendment suggests is that the Minister is wrong in this Bill in identifying the delays in the planning process as being the problem. That is what this Bill tells us, namely, that it is the planning process, public consultation, democracy, public oversight and bureaucratic red tape. That is essentially what a series of the proposals in the Bill suggest is the problem in delivering the famous supply that we so urgently need.

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