Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

There are many Senators who have personally experienced at first hand the issues in local authorities. I am disappointed to say that the local authority I come from, Dún Laoghaire Rathdown, which would be considered perhaps one of the most affluent parts of the country, built six houses last year. There are 5,500 people on the housing list, many of whom are families. That is not a crisis; it is an emergency. Why are we all skirting? Everyone today has used the word "crisis." Somehow, they cannot use the word "emergency." There seems to be some terrible fear that if we say the word "emergency," we are opening up the floodgates. The reality is that local authorities have got away with it because they have not had a Minister on their case.

I was first elected in 1999. I am aware of the frustration of councillors where county managers have effectively run certain local authorities or where they are being told they cannot bring in cash or sell other assets to deliver houses, and where there are people, to use that horrible expression, "sofa-surfing."They are dragging their kids around from house to house, sleeping on sofas rather than going into hostels in which, quite frankly, I would not put anybody. They have to walk from the suburbs to the city every day, being humiliated as they are asked to register as homeless. It is an insensitive and inhumane way of treating people. The local authorities have got away with it because the staff in the Custom House should have been on to them every week and month asking why they were not delivering.

I will be brief as I am conscious of the time but I want to make a few points. I want the Minister of State, if he has not already done so, to secure an audit of the zoned local authority lands in every county, and within that the lands zoned for critical infrastructure. The Minister of State should ask why there is no housing on that land. Why is there resistance to the direct building of social housing as we saw built in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, of which we are so proud today?