Marc MacSharry (Sligo-Leitrim, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the announcement of the €4 billion that will be spent in the time ahead and the fact we will not have a cliff edge in terms of the various supports. I would like to have seen Europe divvying up more than the €900 million. That is required and we will have to display a level of agility as we move forward in terms of additional issues that will have to be addressed to assist our economy and society in its recovery.

Second and most important is the issue of alignment of policy. It is one thing to say housing is an emergency and a priority but, if other policies are not aligned, we will not achieve that. In the north west of the country, nobody is allowed build any houses. There is no rural housing and no rural planning. There is none at all in County Leitrim. That is not consistent with the national emergency we have. People who now rightly realise they have jobs they can work from home are selling properties in Dublin for very high prices and seeking to move to Donegal, Sligo, Leitrim, Mayo, Roscommon and so on, where they compete and push local people out of the market because they have more money to spend. We need to address planning law and make it consistent with the fact we have a housing crisis. We have people willing to build houses and restore derelict cottages all over the country that would be suitable if we were to support them. We have not done that.

In terms of development finance, we have the Central Bank and the pillar banks that are not supporting lending rules that are conducive with the housing emergency. We need to do that and to look at the development plans around the country and ensure we deal with those so zoning and development plans are at their optimum in terms of encouraging development of much-needed housing. Any recovery needs to do that.

The third point I will make is also relevant to policy alignment. I support any announcement of funds with regard to our recovery but we are talking as if the recovery has begun and society is open. It certainly is not open.

We have a level of paranoia and scaremongering that is not consistent with either the numbers in hospital or the daily numbers. Over the course of the weekend the CMO tweeted his outrage at seeing people out doing what we told them to do, which is to have an outdoor summer. We can have a takeaway pint or a Coca-Cola, but we cannot congregate on the canal because the gardaí are going to come along and throw it out. Where do we expect people to go?

As we speak, over in St. Stephen's Green we are fencing off the bandstands because the last thing we want is people to congregate there. We cannot have it both ways. This is replicated all over the country, for example, at the Spanish Arch. Where I live in Strandhill, there are so many bollards on the seafront that had the Nazis done it in France on D-Day, God knows what the outcome of the war would have been.

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