Kieran O'Donnell (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Members have referred to the recent announcement of winners in the Tidy Towns competition. In Limerick, we are proud five communities won bronze medals, Castleconnell, Limerick city centre, Newcastle West, Galbally and Ardpatrick. Adare and Garrienderk were also mentioned for county awards. Birdhill, the winner last year, performed extremely well in the gold medal category. J.P. McManus runs a Going for Gold/Tidy Towns competition for Limerick which has been very successful. I commend him on his support of Limerick hurling and his more recent nationwide funding of GAA clubs.

I support the call for a debate on housing. No Member has all the solutions. This is an integrated problem which needs to be addressed at Department level but also, equally, at local authority level. Many Members have colleagues on local authorities who deal with housing every day. As we know, many of the applications for housing go from local authorities to the Department. Many of them are good applications; some not so good. We need to avoid grandstanding on the housing issue. It is a significant issue in Limerick.We need to find solutions that will work for the people that we represent. People who are listening in are waiting for houses to be built. Houses are under construction in Limerick and many have been built but we need to build many more. We need a mature, considered debate and I ask that the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government, Deputy Eoghan Murphy, come to the House as quickly as possible. I would be very interested in hearing proposals from all sides of the House once Senators have consulted their colleagues in local authorities on their views. We need to work collectively on this. We cannot afford to turn it into a political football.