Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I also support this Bill. A half decent effort by anyone in this House on this matter is worthwhile. We are just talking about this. I wish the Minister well but he is the fifth Minister with responsibility for housing during two successive Fine Gael-led coalition Governments and the situation is getting worse. We can talk and get reports. I am on the Joint Committee for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government and I am blue in the face from reports, site visits and visits to this place and the other, and from experts. We had more people in before the committee this morning who told it as it is. It is getting worse.

Only last Christmas, it was reported that up to 500 families were about to become homeless in Tipperary. That is only in one county - my county of Tipperary. The Minister is allowing people to be made homeless by his support for the banks and the vulture funds. He is playing catch-up and he has no idea. Deputy John McGuinness and myself, along with Senator David Norris, sought to secure cross-party support for a Private Members' Bill aimed at establishing an off-balance sheet national planning co-operative with the sole intention of keeping families which are in mortgage distress in their homes. It would keep them there and borrow money. The group which produced it and the former Master of the High Court went to America recently. They will get funding for this and they will embarrass the Government because they went to the effort of going out to get funds that are there to be borrowed at low interest rates in an effort to sort out this problem, not papering over the cracks and making the situation worse and worse.

I say to the Minister the same thing I said to his predecessor, and I believe it is the reason he did not get to become Taoiseach. I told him he kept talking himself into a bigger hole because the houses had not been built. The hole was getting bigger and the morass was getting bigger and the distress for traumatised people was getting bigger and we have reports, visits and the rest and nothing happened. I will not use the adjective that I would like to use to describe what is happening - it is sweet something something.

The Minister mentions the council. Deputy Healy-Rae came into the Committee for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government, of which he is not a member, and he spoke sense. There are too many reports up and down the country. There is this report and that report, people are shovelling paper instead of shovelling clay to get the houses built.

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