Michael McNamara (Clare, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am taking the Rural Independent Group slot. Deputy McAuliffe talked about the Fianna Fáil approach to housing. I grew up outside a town that very much benefited from that Fianna Fáil approach to housing. There were two council estates. They were called "estates" then and not "developments" but it is the same difference. They were very mixed. A large cross-section of society could live in those and the whole society benefited from it.

It enabled people to get housing or stay at home. There was also a factory there that has since closed down. Unlike many parts of rural Ireland, it was not ravaged by emigration to the same extent. There was a lot of emigration but it was not quite as bad as other areas. A small part of that was perhaps due to those estates. What Deputy McAuliffe forgot to say was that those estates had to be built by Fianna Fáil builders, although that is another matter. It is just a matter of fact. That was generally the case across Clare, but I suppose Clare was perceived to be de Valera's county - a Fianna Fáil county. How could you possibly hope to build houses in a Fianna Fáil county if you were not a Fianna Fáil builder? That is an aside.

I want to focus on the present. I do not want to be churlish. There was a huge societal benefit, but that approach has changed. That is not necessarily because of Fianna Fáil but I do not think what the Minister is heralding is quite a return to those glory days of the past. In Clare at the moment, the threshold is €35,000. If I am not mistaken, for a family of two adults and two children, the income threshold to qualify for social housing is now €38,500. That is an improvement. I welcome every single improvement, and I appreciate that improvements are difficult. They are particularly difficult in the field of housing but €38,500 is still substantially less than the average industrial wage of €45,000.

As I mentioned, there was a factory in Scariff. People who worked in that factory could get a house in that estate and live there. Other people who could not get a job in that factory, or perhaps at times could not get a job anywhere, could also get a house in that estate. It was mixed. That is not the case now. That factory is not there. Even if it was, most factories pay close enough to the average industrial wage. We are not really returning to those days. At that threshold a couple, both of whom who were on the minimum wage - they might be a husband and wife, or they need not be married, or it might not be a male-female relationship - with children would not qualify for social housing in Ireland.

While I welcome what the Minister has done, describing it as brave is maybe a little too much. We should hold off on any plans to take down any of the bronzes around here and put one of the Minister up instead. It is welcome but it is not the stuff revolutions are made of. Hopefully, we can go further in the lifetime of this Government. I appreciate that the Minister is moving in the right direction. I also appreciate Deputy McAuliffe from the Government back benches. It is not easy to be a Government backbencher. I was a Government backbencher too once, albeit at a time when there was not very much money available. I hope such times will not return during the lifetime of this Government.

I do welcome this change but we have a long way to go to return to the days of social housing in Ireland when a huge number of houses were being built, regardless of who was building them. I do not care who was building them or how the builders were selected. There was a huge amount of social housing built. I acknowledge that it was built largely by Fianna Fáil Governments but that does not change the fact that Fianna Fáil is in government now and there is a housing crisis. Nobody is expecting the Government to be able to turn it around in 24 months but we have lot further to go with regard to the limits on social housing before we can say we have a genuinely inclusive social housing policy in this State again.

See this speech in context