Réada Cronin (Kildare North, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Go raibh maith agat, a Leas-Cheann Comhairle. Go raibh maith agat freisin to all the people who travelled to Dublin today to protest against the lack of action on their cause and brought their protest to their capital city.

I am delighted to speak on the Sinn Féin motion. Wherever a dodgy block is sold or big bucks are to be made off the backs of the home buyer, home builder or worker, immediate redress is required. Full and immediate redress is the only way to address the wrongs inflicted and the damage done to people living with the effects of the greed that characterises housing in Ireland. It is not only in Donegal; this matters everywhere. It matters in north Kildare, Mayo and Clare or wherever damage shows its ugly face. This damage is not just to buildings but to families, communities, mental health, financial health and people's sense of feeling safe in their own homes, which they built, bought and paid for and which, through no fault of their own, are disintegrating around them.

It is not just mica or pyrite that caused this crisis but the housing culture and its greed, dysfunction and lack of respect for the citizen. It is a culture where builders, developers and politicians took one of the most basic and powerful human needs we have - the need for a home - and reduced it to a commodity and a scheme for profit with the regulation of "Whatever you are having yourself". Big bucks could be made and corners cut along with deals with the boom-is-getting-boomier devil.

They say bad housing is designed and built by people who know they will never have to live in it. Dangerous housing, the soul destroying housing of mica and pyrite, was given to us by the State-wide housing culture of "Sure look, we will get away with it". And they did, with their shoddy materials, worse work and shocking finish, and people lined up to hand over their life savings for the privilege of a 30-year mortgage.

For years now at our Ard-Fheiseanna, comrades from counties Mayo, Clare and Donegal, in particular, have shared their stories with us about light-touch regulation and the devastation it brought to their lives. Over the years, skirting boards, tiles, lights, wooden presses, slates and doors were falling in around them along with their spirits, marriages, bank balances and peace of mind.

Sinn Féin calls for full redress for the families affected here. We must cast a cold eye on the housing culture then, and by and large, the same housing culture now. The absence of a philosophy of housing beyond markets and profit is destroying our State and society. It gives us penthouses alongside tent cities, cheek by jowl. Parents and children are living on takeaways and their nerves in bed and breakfast accommodation. Mica and pyrite are simply a symptom of a social and political disease where there is no respect for the citizen. Profit is venerated and citizens are exploited. The only cure is new thinking and a new Government. In Sinn Féin, we have that thinking and when the people decide, we will be that Government. The families affected cannot wait another second, however.

I am pleased that the Government is not going to vote against our motion. I ask the Government to support it, thereby supporting our people. We must mind all our people, whatever county they live in, and not abandon them. In housing, the people out there must know that the people in here are on their side.

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