Averil Power (Fianna Fail)

As the Minister is aware, more than four months have passed since the Priory Hall residents were forced to evacuate their homes as a result of a dangerous fire risk. Four months have passed since I raised their plight with the Minister in the House but there is still no sign of a long-term solution to their housing problems. In the short term the residents face the prospect of having to pay rent on temporary accommodation as well as paying their mortgages because the council is appealing the High Court decision to the Supreme Court. I was genuinely shocked to read the response of the Minister to a question on this issue tabled in the Dáil last month. The Minister put it to the House that Dublin City Council had made commendable efforts to provide for the needs of the residents. Frankly, there is nothing commendable about forcing people out of their homes with no advance plan for emergency accommodation for families with infant children who were unsure where they would sleep in subsequent days. There is nothing commendable about trying to make the residents pay rent on temporary accommodation on top of mortgage repayments on uninhabitable accommodation in Priory Hall.

Overall, Dublin City Council's approach has been typified from the start of this debacle by a distinct lack of humanity. My concern is that by listening only to the council's version of events, the Minister is getting a warped view of the reality faced by the residents. By passing the buck between each other, Dublin City Council and the Department are effectively ensuring that no State body is taking responsibility for resolving the problems in Priory Hall.

The Department is insisting that the matter is the responsibility of Dublin City Council. However, Dublin City Council has made it clear at meetings which I attended that it is taking instruction from the Minister's Department and that it has been warned not to set a precedent by accepting responsibility for Priory Hall. This buck-passing must stop. I urge the Minister today, as I did four months ago, to meet the residents and to hear at first hand how all of this is affecting them and their families. I believe if the Minister sat down and listened to them he would feel compelled to help them, to put aside all the bureaucracy, to stop passing the buck and to do the right thing.

I urge the Minister to ensure a proper system is put in place at national level for dealing with housing evacuation situations. Unfortunately, the problems in Priory Hall are likely to recur to varying extents in other developments throughout the country. It is neither fair nor sensible to allow different county councils to take different responses. No doubt the Minister is aware of the announcement yesterday that 250 householders in Belmayne, north-east Dublin, must move out of their homes temporarily due to fire safety problems. Thankfully, they will be accommodated within the same development because there are many empty units in Belmayne and the works should take only a matter of days. Unfortunately, residents in others developments in the coming years may not be quite so lucky. I call on the Minister, who has national responsibility for this issue, to put in place a proper national system for dealing with future problems of this nature.

I fully accept that the responsibility rests with the developers. The State should ensure that the costs rest with developers when these issues arise in future. Unfortunately, we may end up with other situations where developers go bust and are not in a position financially to rectify the situation or where the likes of Tom McFeely, the individual responsible for building Priory Hall, try to do everything they can do avoid their responsibilities. It is sensible to get ahead of this before we end up with future problems. I call on the Minister to sit down, to bring all the agencies together and to put in place a framework for how these issues will be dealt with rather than leaving the residents to run from one Department to another and from the council to their national representatives in an attempt to get someone to take responsibility. Let us put a system in place now to ensure that problems in future can be deal with effectively.