Brendan Ryan (Labour)

I would be the first to defend public servants but those of us who live in Cork and who must put up with the appalling structure that is our Government Buildings on Sullivan's Quay do not have a high opinion of the Office of Public Works. It imposed that building on the city contrary to the advice of everyone on Cork City Council at the time, including the then city manager. It is probably the ugliest and most intrusive building in Cork and it is no credit to the Office of Public Works. It does many other things well but it appears to have two sides — the architecturally sensitive side that does a lot of wonderful conservation work and another side which goes in for Stalinist Soviet socialist realism and block building which is no credit to its architects.

I was at a recent meeting of a voluntary organisation where someone raised a problem she said she had never encountered before — that she was meeting homeless people on the streets of Cork who could not speak English. They are recent immigrants from the accession states who came here in the belief they would get work but who ended up with no work or the work did not last long. As a result of the provision that they must have been in the country for at least two years before they are eligible for benefits; they have no right to any welfare so they end up in a state of indigence that defies description.