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

We need to be clear. The first question is on housing and homelessness. The fourth is on transport and the third is on infrastructure. I would have believed the question on housing would be separate from that on transport. We need to be very careful that we are not amalgamating questions and making it impossible for people to focus on a core issue within the minute and a half they are allowed. This kind of grouping needs to be stopped. The same thing happened last week.

The House is aware that, in the past three years, there has been a long string of announcements on housing and regular claims that the Government is getting on top of the problem. Indeed, the Taoiseach announced at his own party's conference that the Government has a plan and that it is working. This was in sharp contrast with the statement of his Minister, who announced simultaneously that the problem will get worse. Generally speaking, given the claims, no one believes we have turned the corner where housing and homelessness are concerned. The language from the Government has been far too complacent. Unfortunately, people are dying on our streets regularly. People who visit Dublin are shocked at the number of homeless people lying on our streets. House prices continue to escalate. Housing rent comprises a huge proportion of people's salaries, particularly young people who are starting out on the employment ladder. All of us in our clinics are meeting young mothers, with their children, who have gone back to live with their mothers in extremely overcrowded circumstances. They are not on any housing list. They may be on a social housing list but they are not identified as homeless. We need to avoid using any language that suggests the problem is well on the way to being resolved. It is not; it is getting worse. We need to get rid of the spin and the attempt to put some gloss on it. I have never seen the problem as bad.

The number on the social housing list is very high. We now have to say to couples and families that, although they have been the list for six years, they will have to wait for another four years. That is what is being said to people in Cork. I can imagine what it is like in Dublin. I have been on the doorsteps in Dublin meeting families who have been told they will never get a council house. This is not about the Taoiseach's latest fad, which is distinguishing between social housing and council housing; it is a matter of the inability of people to have any prospects. They cannot get into the rental market. There is considerable human misery as a result of this problem.

I cannot deal with the transport question now. I have two questions tabled.

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