Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I have been providing accommodation for the past 35 years and I am glad to have been involved in it. I voted against ending the eviction ban. I believe the statistics in County Kerry prove I did the right thing in not agreeing with the Government. The people who come to my clinic say I did the right thing quite simply because of what has happened since in County Kerry. The county has been particularly affected by the ending of the eviction ban.

I do not thank Deputy Cian O'Callaghan for bringing this motion to the House and I will explain why. This is a motion on home ownership. This is the same Deputy Cian O'Callaghan who objected to 24 houses in Coolock, 19 houses in Howth because he considered it to be overdevelopment, and 51 new houses in Clontarf because he was worried about bats, badgers, flora and fauna. This is the man who is speaking about housing to the Minister, and he was worried about the bats, badgers, flora and fauna.

I thank the reporter Philip Ryan who rightly put out there that the Social Democrats leader Deputy Holly Cairns has defended her Deputies objecting to the development of thousands of houses in the middle of a housing crisis. Deputy Cairns has pitched herself as the voice of a generation that has been locked out of the housing market and will be worse off than their parents. I have previously highlighted that Deputy Shortall objected to 100 new apartments and 800 new homes on the Oscar Traynor site. Of these 343 would have been social and affordable homes and 340 would have been cost rental. The remaining 170 were going to be affordable units.

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