Alex White (Labour)

There is a clear need for a debate on the matter alluded to by Senator Fitzgerald, namely, the collapse in the past 24 hours of the so-called public private partnership housing projects at St. Michael's House, O'Deveney Gardens and other areas of Dublin city. It is not an exaggeration to describe this event as a parable of our times. It tells us a number of things about where we are at this stage of our development.

First, it tells us that at the time of an economic downturn, the first people to feel the brunt are the most vulnerable in our society, those whose communities have been ravaged by under investment, drug abuse, social exclusion and the lack of basic facilities. We saw reference in the newspapers to schemes being abandoned. I agree with Senator Fitzgerald that it would be no exaggeration to say that when we talk about schemes being abandoned, we are talking about communities being abandoned.

Second, it tells us and brings into stark relief something many of us suspected. It demonstrates the folly of our over-reliance, particularly in recent years, on the private sector to address pressing social problems and concerns. We have become obsessed with outsourcing everything to the private sector and have little or no confidence in our ability or the ability of a properly funded public sector to take the lead in issues such as this. This is what inevitably happens when we have such an obsession, over-reliance and naive belief in the private sector and trust it will set aside its basic profit motive and deal with and confront the issues. I am tempted to suggest that instead of denoting public private partnerships, the acronym PPP should denote private profit prevails. That is clearly what it means in the current situation.