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

I generally agree with what is said about the programme for Government in respect of housing, in terms of the language contained therein compared with the actual implementation. The local infrastructure housing activation fund, LIHAF, has not worked. I understand only seven houses benefitted from the repair and relief initiative. A series of initiatives over the past two years have had very little impact. There is no sense that there is any urgency or conviction in respect of the scale of the issue.

It seems to me that recent statements from the Taoiseach, the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, the Minister of State, Deputy English, and from the Housing Agency and regional housing executive personnel are all designed to try to put the housing crisis in Ireland in some context. We are being told that things are not that bad compared with other countries and so on.

Yet all of us in the House are inundated with people coming into our clinics or contacting us who are in dire situations on foot of having no place to go with their children. Some are living in very overcrowded conditions with their parents and siblings in, for example, a boxroom in a small house. Many are on the homeless pathway and others are facing that route. It is very difficult to match the rhetoric and language we have heard with their everyday life experience. To be frank, the language which has come from officialdom of late has been insulting to them.

I put it to the Taoiseach that there has been a sense from officialdom for quite some time that the market will take care of this and that we do not need to build local authority houses to any great extent. That view has been there for the past three or four years. I met Department officials at the time of the formation of the Government when I was talking with Independents and that very much seemed to be what was coming from the officials. It seems to me that the entire approach has failed abysmally. I could go on to health and other issues, but my time is up. On the issue of homelessness alone, it is important not to insult people who are in desperate situations in terms of their personal circumstances and housing.

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