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

That is what this amendment deals with. It points out that we need to establish what is the real delay. That is what it is asking for, and it points to the fact that the biggest delay is the fault of the landlords, developers and property owners. I note the Minister is shaking his head. Can he explain why a building in NAMA hands is sitting empty? Is it because of problems with the planning process? No, that is not the reason it is empty, even though hundreds of people could move in there. The problem is that the developers are waiting for the optimum moment to realise the biggest possible profit from that site. The mandate of NAMA set down by the Minister's Government is facilitating that and the people who are down there are exposing that fact. Even at the most micro level, we can see it.

Perhaps the Minister could intervene in this matter. When I was down there this morning I met plumbers who were trying to connect running water and install heat in the building but a representative of what I presume is the receiver refused access to the plumbers. The people down there include the Simon Community, Peter McVerry and members of the Unite and Mandate unions. They are providing individual rooms for people who cannot find accommodation in the available emergency accommodation. They are not substituting for what exists already but when that emergency accommodation reaches capacity tonight, those people who do not have not have anywhere to sleep will have bedding in individual rooms with supports provided by the Simon Community and other volunteers. The receiver is physically preventing plumbers who want install heat and connect water in that building from doing so.

I believe that is utterly reprehensible. It is the result of the fact that a building owned by us is in the hands of people who just want to make a profit out of it. They do not want the public, even though we own it, to have any say in how it can be moved immediately into social and public use. That demonstrates in a microcosm, a rather significant microcosm because it is a big building, what is the real problem. The State has the capacity to provide directly, immediately and quickly the emergency accommodation necessary. It is failing to do so not because we have to override planning processes. We could get a change of use from office to residential relatively quickly.

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