Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein)

I listened intensely to the Minister's speech and one of the things that always strikes me is the Government seems to believe what it is doing is working. Do those in government not talk to their constituents and meet people, including the families who have elderly people living in their accommodation with them because they were put out of the places they were renting? Have they not spoken to people with youngsters who have come back to live with them who, having lived abroad for years, have come back here to try to get a house but can get nowhere? We all meet those people and know the situation is not working.

The Minister says it is crisis and the Government is treating it as such. If it was treating this like a crisis, the Government would be doing much more to resolve the issue. A big part of Irish society, which is totally left out of this, are the ordinary working people. They are the people who go to college, get a good job and think they are going to get on in life but discover they cannot afford, or do not have a hope of affording, a house or place to live. We all meet them every day of the week. They are the ones telling us the Government is failing. They are the ones this State is supposed to protect and look after. They get up every day, go to work and pay their taxes, yet they cannot find a house. If they do find one, they cannot afford it.

The Minister talked about needing big investors to come in and about all these apartments that will be built. Who will live in these apartments? It will be people who are earning €120,000 or €140,000 a year because that is the only sector they will cater for. They will cater for people who are on very high salaries. People who are ordinary workers and earn decent money but will still not meet that will be left behind. They will not be on the social housing list and will have nowhere else to go. The only thing they can do is to look to Australia, Canada or somewhere to emigrate to. That is unfortunately what I see.

I have youngsters in my own house who are in their 20s and that is what all their friends talk about doing. They talk about going somewhere else for the very reason that they do not see the prospect of being able to get a job in this country that will put them in a position where they can buy a house in the future. They talk about going away somewhere else, hoping to make enough money to come back with a deposit and to be able to buy a place. That is the way things are going; I have seen it. I recently spoke to an auctioneer who told me about new houses coming on the market in my area and that were going to be up to €400,000. There is not a hope for ordinary people to buy them and the Government just wants to leave them behind. The Government is a total and absolute failure as far as this policy on housing is concerned.

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