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

If I was going to a summit on social issues in Europe I would certainly make the point, and I hope the Taoiseach did this, that the biggest social crisis facing this country is housing and homelessness and that it is at appalling emergency levels. A little known fact, but one noted by Mercy Law Resource Centre among others, is that, incredibly, Ireland opted out of the right to housing provisions of the European Social Charter, even though it was used to sell the Lisbon treaty to us. I presume it was Fianna Fáil that made this decision, which shows its commitment to social housing even then. Should we not opt into the provision on the right to housing in the European Social Charter?

Second, to what extent does the Taoiseach think that EU state aid and competition rules are causing us a problem in delivering the social and public housing we need? Certainly in my local authority area, and I presume this happens everywhere else, the tendering processes that require us most of the time to outsource work on public housing are one of the major areas of bureaucracy and delay preventing us from delivering the public housing that is required.

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