Paul Gavan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the Minister. The mid-term capital review is, in Sinn Féin's view, a complete misnomer, as it implies that there was a plan to review in the first place. There was not. In 2015, the Government simply cobbled together several projects already under way and repackaged them as a five-year plan. Now, two years later, the Government is scrambling to make it look like it is actually doing something in terms of investment in our social and economic infrastructure, and once again it is clear it has no intention of doing anything unless it benefits private interests.

It is accepted universally outside the Dáil and Seanad that the best way to address the housing crisis is for the State to start building homes again and for the State to purchase homes, as per the Sinn Féin plan. Capital funding is needed to enable local authorities to buy houses and build homes to increase capacity in the system, and in our alternative budget last year we were able to provide for this. Such a programme would have the added advantage of driving down rents in Cork, Dublin, Waterford and other major cities, as well as in rural areas.

Sinn Féin, in its alternative budget, proposed an additional 7,000 units through acquisitions and new builds as part of our capital plan. What we have got from the Government, however, on this issue has been taken straight from the Fianna Fáil playbook when it was unable to solve any of the big problems, namely, the introduction of tax breaks. We had the so-called first-time buyer's scheme, which was half-baked, with no real detail and which had not been properly teased out.

We know that housing is the big issue, with people unnecessarily being in emergency accommodation, sleeping in their parents' and friends' front rooms and without a roof over their heads. This is the time to deal with these issues and put our money where our mouths are, as it were. Fianna Fáil had the chance to do so, but, of course, it did nothing, as usual. The Government of Fine Gael and the Independents had its chance, but it did nothing either.Here we go again, with no real solution to the housing crisis.

It is not just in housing that we see the lack of vision from the Government. There are capacity problems in health and education and our roads network is in need of up to €1.5 billion in investment just to get the roads back to a safe level. None of this is of interest to Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil, unless, of course, there are contracts to be doled out to private interests. That is the ideology driving current and past Government planning and it is at the core of why we are in the continued mess we are in. When we invest in our public services, we are investing in our communities, in our children and in the future. It is not simply a cost but an investment that will provide us with great returns.

I want to address the issue of the M20. One of the great failures of Fine Gael in the past six years is the abandonment of the M20 project. The fact a Minister for Finance based in Limerick would make such a decision is, frankly, shameful. I know friends and colleagues commuting each day to Cork and it is nothing less than a nightmare. Unfortunately, I am old enough to remember when Ed Walsh first put forward the idea of an Atlantic corridor - it must be back in the 1980s - yet here we still are, waiting to see whether the Government will commit to an M20 project. I have to put it very directly - to date, the Government has let the people of Limerick down. There is nothing else to be said. It should have been a key priority and the fact it was not is, frankly, shameful. How are we ever to have proper regional balance if the Government continues to fail to link the key cities on the western seaboard? It is a huge failure.