Conor McGuinness (Waterford, Sinn Fein)

Earlier in the debate, the Minister of State acknowledged that the Government is not doing enough on housing, but the truth is that it has not been doing enough for decades, and from what we see it does not intend to start now. Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael benchmark themselves against their previous failures. They routinely confuse announcements with delivery and think nothing of misleading the Irish people on housing. This week in Lismore, west Waterford, a planning application for a private development of 20 much-needed homes, 16 apartments and four houses, was refused just because Irish Water cannot provide a viable connection to the town's water or wastewater systems. There is another site just behind it where 16 family homes are in jeopardy too. That is 36 homes in a small rural town in west Waterford blocked, in the Minister of State's constituency and mine, not by red tape, not by local objection, not because Government has not rolled out enough red carpet for investment funds and vultures, but by crumbling underfunded infrastructure and its failure over more than a decade to invest. In Ardmore, west Waterford, affordable housing for locals has been on the waiting list so long that people are losing hope. Every year it is delayed, people choose and vote with their feet. They go to the larger urban areas, leaving that village and many other coastal villages in County Waterford facing a demographic cliff edge. This is what the Government's failure looks like; families unable to build, councils unable to approve and rural communities being hollowed out. Irish Water told the Government 18 months ago that it needed investment to meet the Government's own housing targets, and it ignored them. Now, real deliverable housing is being blocked in towns like Lismore because the pipes and the planning system cannot cope. The Government's legacy is delay, dysfunction and zero delivery. We need a multi-annual investment plan for rural water systems, a proper rural housing strategy that includes towns and villages, and real co-ordination between planning and infrastructure. That is the only way we will get homes delivered, not with more spin or delay, and certainly not with announcements but with action.

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