Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome that the Taoiseach is open to a review. I am keen to acknowledge the substantial amount of work done by the board and I commend those involved on it. Nevertheless, this review has to be about the community. It has to be about the people who live in the kind of atrocious housing conditions that the Taoiseach has himself witnessed. Should the Taoiseach go into any of these blocks of flats and ask himself whether this is how our citizens should be living in 2020, the clear answer would be "No". Poor housing is not only a consequence of disadvantage and poverty, but it is also a driver of further inequality and marginalisation. I have lost count of the number of homes and flats I have been in that do not have room for a kitchen table or a place for the children to do their homework or for the family to eat a meal. That is scandalous in 2020. That needs to be wired in.

I wish to draw the Taoiseach's attention to another thing that should concern him - it certainly concerns me. Goal 4 of the national drug and alcohol strategy sets out the importance of enabling communities to participate in the shaping of decisions that affect them. Community participation is critical to driving interventions and solutions. In the north inner city the HSE is actively undermining this. In fact, the HSE is acting to remove participation workers from the north-east and north-west inner city. I cannot overstate how wrong this decision is and I ask the Taoiseach to examine it. I will write to him on the specifics of it. Will the Taoiseach intervene and prevent that from happening?

See this speech in context