Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Six years ago the Government effectively abandoned the idea of taking policy consultations seriously. In retrospect, the evidence suggests that the mounting failures of Government to plan for a major crisis could have been avoided if there had been genuine political engagement, with policy debate and analysis. In the past, the NESC played a crucial role in providing a foundation for policy development by holding high level discussions, finding agreed baseline facts and identifying potential solutions. A defining problem of the past three years in particular has been the absence of a serious policy basis underpinning Government strategy. As a result, we have seen disjointed announcements defined more by repackaging current activity than actually doing something about a problem. The recent announcements on housing exemplify this, with the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, Deputy Simon Coveney, announcing a help-to-buy scheme while the Minister for Social Protection, Deputy Leo Varadkar, says he will get rid of it, all in the space of nine months. A disjointed incoherence has been evident in such announcements.

The mounting crisis in housing was at first ignored by Government and a growing series of housing strategies has delivered more ministerial announcements than houses. A recurring theme has been the Taoiseach telling us how seriously he takes the NESC but then ignoring it at crucial stages of policy review and development. We get the sense that there is a lot of ad hockery. If there had been a proper policy basis underlying the strategy and continuous engagement with that, especially from Government, the crises could have been averted. It is clear that the Government took its eye off the ball on housing in 2011, 2012 and 2013. It states that it never saw the level of homelessness getting to the level to which it got but Focus Ireland and the Simon Community had alerted people in 2012 and 2013 to the fact that it was going to get worse. There did not appear to be a policy basis in the Government's response and we are still in serious trouble with housing and homelessness. The Government is not catching up with it and the situation is becoming worse, as we all know from having met and engaged with people on the ground.

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