Catherine Ardagh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to raise two matters today. The first concerns a report from the European Committee of Social Rights, a European watchdog, which found there to be inadequate standards of living accommodation in certain housing estates in Ireland and shows that there has been a serious deterioration in the standard of accommodation since the financial crisis. The report names housing estates in Dublin South Central, including: Dolphin House, where residents have been living with sewage invasions; St. Teresa's Gardens; and Bridgefoot Street.

Many of these estates are in fact now being rejuvenated. The report, however, notes that the Government lacks a national timeframe for the refurbishment of local authority stock. As the House knows, we have a huge housing crisis and this report points to a further aspect of that crisis that needs to be addressed. I call on the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, to come before us and discuss how he intends to keep on top of the standards of our local authority accommodation stock. I have met many of the residents living in local authority housing around the city. One can often see black mould growing on the walls and children suffering from various health and lung difficulties. This is a serious matter that needs to be debated in this House.

The second issue concerns a new report by the Economic and Social Research Institute, ESRI, on projections for massive population increases which will put serious strains on health care by 2020. The figures in question were taken from the Central Statistics Office, CSO, and the last census and show that there will be more than 1.1 million extra people living in this country by 2030. This will obviously put a huge stress on the health system which is, as we know, already under pressure with more people on waiting lists, longer chemotherapy waiting times, failures to get patients the right scans, and so forth. Our health system would currently seem to be in a crisis and more people relying on it further down the line will obviously deepen this crisis. I call on the Minister for Health to come to the House and discuss this report with us. We have not seen him here for a while so I would be delighted if he could come here to address the current health care situation.