Pat O'Neill (Fine Gael)

Four Senators have referred to jobs. Before I ask the Leader about another issue, I welcome the announcement today that HCL, a software support company, will provide 200 new jobs in Kilkenny. This is great news and shows the need for a technological university in the south east. It proves that if we have well-educated young people in an area, we will get jobs, particularly in the IT sector.

I ask the Leader for a debate on what I believe is a crisis, namely, the housing issue. Some 98,000 people are currently on housing waiting lists, including 3,000 in my own county of Kilkenny, 2,000 of whom are in Kilkenny city. We all went through the Celtic tiger, which was to solve everything. The housing issue is a failure of the Celtic tiger and is why we are in the situation we are in. The Part V provision was part of the Celtic tiger and was intended to deal with issues such as social inclusion. I always felt Part V would never work. Some councils implemented it in different ways and as housing estates will not be built again in many areas, how will we get people housed? We should have a brainstorming session and a full debate on the housing issue, which would be useful and might allow ideas to emerge.

I remember that in the 1970s and 1980s, when this country was also in recession, local authorities had the money to build houses, which provided employment in the trades. We must examine the situation. Part V is not working. At present, there is the rental accommodation scheme and the social leasing scheme but when houses come on the market, councils cannot afford to buy them because they do not have the money. We must have some lateral thinking on this issue. A debate on the housing crisis would help.

I am a member of a Government party. It was the continuous Government policies implemented in recent years that pushed the housing issue. What we have ended up with following the Celtic tiger is ghost estates and unfinished estates in areas where people are not going to live. To take Kilkenny city, there are only two unfinished estates in the city area and they are unfinished only in regard to roads and the like, and people are living in these estates. However, in other areas of County Kilkenny, there are ghost estates in areas to which people do not want to move from Kilkenny city, although there are 2,000 in the city on waiting lists. A debate on housing would be a useful exercise.