Damien English (Meath West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It was announced loads of times. There were leaflets and posters that the railway line was coming but no money was set aside for it at all. It had not been brought through the planning process. When it is put back on track, we will bring it through the planning process and we will allocate the money and deliver it. It is needed. It is the only part of the greater Dublin region that does not have a rail connection. It was not cancelled. I will say, also, that in the way we now do our business, every Department has joined-up-thinking. We have roads, rail and all the different connections working together. When I first started at my first council meeting, the Navan rail line and the motorway were being looked at. I asked the Fianna Fáil Government of the day to link the two together and put motorway and rail together at the same time. I was told we cannot do that, those two do not talk to each other. Thankfully, that has changed now. All our agencies talk to one another, we have proper planning and delivery and that will continue.

If we stick to our plan, which was put together by the whole of Government, that will work.

I want to touch on Deputy Boyd Barrett's comments first. He was one of the first to flag up that this would be an issue in the early years. When people say this Government has been here for nine years I ask them to judge us on our performance since we made housing a number one priority in 2016 and allocated the resources. By the end of this year we will have delivered over 100,000 housing solutions in different combinations of all the schemes. As time goes on there will be more permanent social housing as opposed to having to use the HAP scheme and so on. The Deputy is right to say that there were signs that we had to step in before then. When we came into government in 2011 we did not have any money. We were €20 billion short every year. The Deputy flagged this problem in 2013, 2014 and 2015. The first chance we got to put real money behind this and make real plans was in 2015 and 2016. We did that. I ask the Deputy to judge us from there on. I will take criticism on those couple of years but I will not take the Fianna Fáil criticism that we are here nine years. The first four or five years we were trying to cover the ground it left us with, which was a serious mess, based on construction as well. I am going on about that because every speech tonight has tried to get at Fine Gael on this as well.

I have not seen the list of demands from the protest outside today. I will look through them. Previous marchers have asked the Government to go to 10,000 social housing units and thankfully we have reached that level this year. Now I hear talk of 20,000, which is about right. We are not that far off and I agree with Deputies on that. Other parties hope it will come to that level too. Other people's plans are not anywhere near 20,000 a year but we are. We will set aside the funding under Project Ireland 2040 to bring us to 12,000 a year social housing units. Next year it will be 11,000 but it will be 12,000 the year after. If we add in the affordable housing that is in the system we are not far off the 20,000 we need to get to every year and keep it at that.

Some people are not here now but the Fianna Fáil spokesperson was here all day telling us that Fine Gael is against social housing and that if we let Fianna Fáil back in it will fix it, that it has a proven track record of building houses. That was said on Tuesday night as well. As for the reason we lack social housing, in 2006 and 2007 when this country over 12 months built 90,000 houses, which were needed in the long run, but how many were social housing?

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