Patricia Ryan (Kildare South, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

Housing for All has a lofty title which promises a great deal and it will probably deliver a great deal, but unfortunately it will deliver for developers and vulture funds and nobody will be surprised. Successive governments, which have been made up of the current Government parties and the Labour Party, have been doing this for decades.

The Minister, Deputy Darragh O'Brien, acknowledged yesterday in this House that the system is broken. Does he realise it did not break itself? Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael, the Green Party and the Labour Party blindly following free market-led policies has broken this system. I am unsure if any of the Government parties know how broken the system is and a big part of me feels they do not greatly care either.

The Minister also said yesterday that Sinn Féin opposed the Land Development Agency. He is right, and if he was listening to his own party councillors, he would also know they also opposed it. The president of the Association of Irish Local Government is Fianna Fáil Councillor Mary Hoade. She appeared at the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Housing, Local Government and Heritage in May and spoke of councillors' fears that their role in planning is eroded by the Bill which introduces the Land Development Agency.

I have said it before in this House that Government Deputies must have nobody belonging to them that has ever had to appeal or apply for social housing, because if they did, the system would be better.

The plan proves that this Government is out of touch and out of ideas. It is time for them to move aside and allow Sinn Féin implement its policies. These are policies which would tip the scales away from developers and vulture funds and towards ordinary workers and families. Only a Sinn Féin Government and housing Minister will make the kind of change in housing that is needed to end the Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael housing crisis. Deputy Ó Broin literally wrote the book on how to fix this, and in fact he has written two. The current Government might learn a small thing or two by reading them.

I will finish with this. I was listening intently to Deputy McGuinness where he spoke about local authorities. I inform him that there is a 12-year waiting list in my local authority in Kildare.

3 o’clock

Not only that, there is a 12-week waiting period to get on the list in the first place. It is ludicrous.

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