Feargal Quinn (Independent)

This motion is disingenuous, in so far as it attempts to focus attention on the specific issue of rural housing while ignoring the much more important and urgent problem of housing on a national basis. It is an act of political opportunism on behalf of Government Members to cherry-pick the parts of an issue which suit them while closing their eyes to the areas where the record of this Government is anything but good.

During the past decade, we have achieved a great deal in this country. I am often asked, when abroad, to explain why Ireland has become so successful. We can be proud of many of our achievements. We have consistently achieved growth rates well ahead of our partners in the European Union. Unemployment has been reduced from crisis levels to the point at which everyone is prepared to forget about the problems which remain in that regard. Young people in this country do not remember the high unemployment levels of the past and are in danger of becoming overconfident. We have continued to attract foreign direct investment, which has been the real lifeblood of our boom.

However, we have failed in a number of ways over the past decade. We have not only failed to keep a grip on inflation but have even tended to encourage it recklessly. We have also failed to provide an adequate infrastructure for the knowledge society we claim to be interested in developing, most notably through our abysmal failure to make broadband available to everyone in the country at a reasonable cost.

One failure, housing, stands above all others. We have failed to provide houses where they are needed and have instead created a nightmare of urban sprawl which has spawned a raft of problems, to say nothing of causing us to be held up to the world as a classic example of how not to plan cities. Several weeks ago, I raised this matter on the Order of Business after realising we were second from the bottom of a list of countries which were criticised for urban sprawl.

We have failed to balance supply and demand to bring about an orderly property market. For the past decade and more, we just let prices rip. This has greatly benefited builders, developers and property investors but has created nothing but misery for the hundreds of thousands of young people who have been forced to pay outlandish prices for houses in places where they do not want to live. They have been forced into a life of long-distance commuting on overcrowded roads and left with little time for their children. I cannot believe that people are forced to make daily commutes to Dublin over distances of 150 km and more simply because we did not plan properly. This situation was not inevitable but was allowed to arise by a Government which shut its eyes to the consequences of short-sighted planning and land use policies. The people will pay for the consequences of those policies for many years to come. With interest rates continuing to rise, we can safely predict that the worst of the pain is still to come.

Our failure in housing is a major blot on the Celtic tiger and it is the height of foolishness to try to divert our attention by focusing on the less consequential issue of rural housing. I do, however, concur with Senator MacSharry in his criticism of the right of somebody living in San Francisco to object to a development in rural Ireland.

We should focus our efforts on undoing, to the extent that it may still be possible, the grave damage inflicted in the past decade to housing in this country. It is not yet too late to take the opportunity to make amends.