Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I agree with my colleague, Senator Humphreys, on Senators not being included in the Committee on the Future of Healthcare. It is disappointing that 60 Members of the Oireachtas have been excluded from the process.

It is important that we look to the long term of where we are going as a country. The latest employment figures released are extremely significant in that we now have an unemployment rate of 7.5%, down from 15.1%. The number of people working in this country is now at 2.04 million. In the 12 months up to September this year, more than 57,000 new jobs were created.That is over 1,100 new jobs per week.

That refers back to the demand for housing, an issue raised by my colleague, Senator Noone, and how we respond in the appropriate way to accommodate those people who are now working and paying a contribution through PRSI to the cost of running this State. We must carefully consider how we do long-term planning in urban centres. For instance, Dublin is spread out and it is taking people up to two hours to get to work. We need to take the longer-term view and consider what happens in other cities where people have gone up rather than out in terms of housing build. If we build upwards we can provide more space for recreation, social activities and sports. We need to have that debate.

This country has a huge issue with building higher than two storeys. With proper planning, there is nothing wrong with building higher than two storeys because people could walk to work in five or ten minutes instead of spending two hours travelling to work. A developer in Cork who is building new office accommodation was advised that he needed to provide residential accommodation close by and was proposing 200 apartments. That has been turned down by the councillors, which is very disappointing. That is a wrong decision and it is not the way to do business in this country. We need to have a debate on that issue in the House.