Pa Daly (Kerry, Sinn Fein)

The fundamental difference between the Government's attitude towards housing and the Opposition's attitude is that the Government thinks - the Taoiseach said it again today - that the answer to all the problems is just to provide more units. He believes that providing houses that have rents of €3,000 per month is okay so long as there is more supply in the market. He thinks that is going to fix everything. It is a market-based policy which has been failing for years and it will continue to fail in the future.

A housing officer on Kerry County Council recently told me it is like a jungle out there. We are now dealing with more older people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s who are renting houses and are made homeless. There is a situation in Kerry where all of the people who need emergency accommodation in the county are put into one place. A person might live an hour or two away from Tralee but that is the only emergency accommodation that is available for that person. After five or ten years of this Government - whatever way you want to call it - and 14 years of Fine Gael in government, that is the situation for people seeking emergency accommodation but, in addition, there is no affordable housing scheme in Kerry. We saw the recent changes to the tenant in situ scheme. There were three very worthy cases into which a lot of work had been put by the local authority. There were a lot of effort and these are people who really needed to be helped out. Sale was agreed but now they cannot progress the sale or sign contracts to give these people the security they deserve and require.

A couple of years ago, the Government announced a new tenant purchase scheme. The terms and conditions of that scheme specified that the sale must be completed within four months. Anybody who knows anything about buying a house or conveyancing knows that is impossible. When it was raised in the Dáil, Micheál Martin said it was a cop out by Kerry County Council when it sought basic details as to how the scheme was to be implemented. It is clear to me that there is no plan. Today's announcement was more chaos and more confusion for people who are vulnerable. People are looking for answers. They are going to get their answer. They are going to get their answer this day week outside the Dáil and they are going to get their answer in Cork on Saturday week.

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