Aodhán Ó Ríordáin (Dublin Bay North, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I look forward to the Minister's responses to the issues I am going to raise. Nobody needs to be reminded that we are in the middle of a pandemic. It is a national crisis and the health concerns are foremost in our minds. However, the ability of people to respond to the crisis is hugely impacted by how and where they live. One is more likely to survive this crisis if one has a better quality of accommodation. What the crisis has done is rip off the plaster we have over many of our public services and expose the way we live in Ireland. Our response in this period of time has to be far-reaching. It must involve an acceptance of many of the failures of Irish society and a collective pledge that we will not allow these things to re-emerge. We have been talking forever in this House about a State response to childcare provision, ending the two-tier health system and, God forbid, implementing a rent freeze. We were told there are complications around these issues and they cannot happen. Then a crisis comes and we find they can happen.

I remember only too vividly the raised voices in this House the last time we had a major national crisis over the economic collapse. Those raised voices were about the behaviour of the banks and why we had to fund them, invest in them and bankroll them. We could not do anything in this country without them and we had to have lending starting again. They would learn their lesson, they would change and everything would be better. Of course, it only took the next crisis for many financial institutions to see their opportunity and revert to type. It is no surprise to me and many other people that the same banking ethic or lack thereof, the amorality within the system, prevails. These institutions see an opportunity to screw somebody and they are going to screw them. That is happening today.

Given that the Minister's Department has not an absolute knowledge but certainly a huge amount of knowledge of how housing works and the nature and dynamics of the sector in this country, is it working with the Department of Finance on analysing the issues, including the nature of mortgage distress, and working out how the two Departments can work together to address the issues in the coming months and years in order to keep people in their homes? Do we have an answer for the people who have lost their jobs and feel they will not necessarily have an opportunity to return to employment in the short term?

If the banks are sending people letters, telephoning them or increasing interest rates, as they do because that is what they do, do we have a response for that as a people? Do we have a response to that as a Parliament? I know this is a cliché, and it feels almost like a political point-scoring exercise, but when the banks needed us the State stepped in and did not let them fail. Now that the people need us and the banks are not their friends, if the Minister and his Department are not already having conversations with the Department of Finance, will they start having those conversations and not wait for the time when this comes tumbling down the road as a major issue in households across the country?

On homeless services, I understand that the PPE required by those on the front line dealing with very vulnerable people in our homeless services, many of whom are living in conditions that many of us in this House would not live in - the pandemic again exposing the nature of the limitations of their living circumstances - has not been made available to them. Is the Minister having conversations with the HSE and the Department of Health about that?

I am interested in the Minister's comment about council funding. He mentioned that if any of us were being told by our local council that it could not fund a particular project because it did not have the resources, he would like to know. I appreciate those comments. I am sure the Minister will be getting a lot of correspondence in that regard. The Minister also referred to the issue regarding UL, which is fair enough. He also responded to the issue about direct provision. That is fair enough as well.

My final question concerns strategic housing developments and the Minister's view of it. I have noted his comment about objections, etc. One of the issues that people have with the strategic housing development legislation is that it totally overrode the democratically constituted development plan of the local authority voted in by councillors and that it went straight to An Bord Pleanála, which does not have to adhere to that development plan and, therefore, the Department of Housing, Planning and Local Government, through this legislation, has afforded developers the rule book. They own it and they can do what they like with it. In my part of the world I am dealing with a fire service which I am told does not have the capacity to deal with any fire above the sixth floor of an apartment block, yet An Bord Pleanála is handing out planning permissions for major scale developments across the northside of Dublin and the State. What we all want, as I am sure the Minister will agree, are communities. We want housing as a public good that helps communities and people to grow together. Where the show is being run by somebody with a profit motive, it will have a major influence on the direction of policy.

I would appreciate the Minister's comments on those issues.

See this speech in context