Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Earlier this summer, Deputy O'Connell and the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, supposedly had daggers drawn over the development of the Dublin metro. Later in the summer, I happened to be at a public meeting where the Minister, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, and the Minister of State, Deputy Catherine Byrne, who is sitting behind him, had an upfront, full-scale public row on how we would develop St. Michael's Estate in Inchicore. I read that the Minister, Deputy Catherine Murphy, said that Cathal Brugha Barracks would be used as a potential site for public housing, with which I agree and for which this House voted, only to read on Sunday that the Minister of State, Deputy Kehoe, said they can go to Mullingar.

In terms of my question, I welcome that the people of Cork have been given a chance to vote for a directly elected mayor of their city. I would like to know the process for doing that, but why is the Minister leaving the people of Dublin out and leaving our city with chaotic leadership and no co-ordination of transport, housing, planning and development? He is here saying that Dublin City Council should be doing something on the vacant sites levy. Allow it to do it by allowing us to elect a mayor so that we can have leadership of our city rather than have Fine Gael internal rows everywhere and letting the city go into gridlock and a housing crisis, which is what the Minister is doing. Where is our mayor for Dublin?

See this speech in context