Louise O'Reilly (Dublin Fingal West, Sinn Fein)

The Minister of State has some neck to move that amendment. I thank Deputy Gould for bringing forward the motion and for all his work on this issue.

There are 126 boarded-up homes in Fingal County Council's area. That amounts to 500 men, women and children who could be housed. Can the Minister of State imagine what it must be like for people to walk past those houses when they are living in overcrowded and unsuitable accommodation that absolutely interferes with their ability to live a decent life? They walk down the road and see a boarded-up house. The Minister of State's party colleague is clever enough not to have an office locally. Constituents cannot find her because she is hiding from his housing crisis. I see it because they come to my constituency clinic and ask me a question: "Why is there a boarded-up house down the road from me when I am stuck in my mother's back bedroom and my kids are all forced to share the same room?" What do I say? I tell them it is Government policy because that is what it is.

The responses to the freedom of information requests by Deputy Gould's office make an absolute lie out of the Minister of State's weaselly words this evening. The Deputy has put the facts on the record. He has offered a solution, which is what my constituents want. How dare the Minister of State come in here and pat himself on the back. He said rolling out planned maintenance programmes means issues can be identified early on and there can be a systematic response. Will he go away out of that? There as twice as many applications for housing maintenance as there are local authority dwellings in my constituency. The Government is not maintaining the housing stock, which is being left to rot. When people hand back the keys, it is far too expensive to remedy because the Government is not funding the local authority to bring those homes back into use. We have a housing crisis because of Government policy. That is the only reason.

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