Jennifer Murnane O'Connor (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I wish to raise an issue with the Minister for Housing, Planning and Local Government. Something is very broken in the system when between 15,000 and 20,000 protesters lined the streets last weekend to protest the Government's policies on housing. We are all working hard but there is no joined-up thinking. People are overspending on rent and the State is not building the houses that are needed with the kind of living spaces people want and in places they want to live and work affordably.

We have a beautiful accessible island but everything is concentrated in Dublin. Irrespective of what the Acting Leader says in reply, this is borne out by last week's Society of Chartered Surveyors Ireland, SCSI, report. We cannot become an island that stands on one city alone. We would topple, not only because we would be off balance but because it goes against who we are and what and where we come from. The Government has led a sustained destruction of rural Ireland. It has closed post offices, stalled broadband provision, allowed large companies to see the benefits of Dublin and, but for a few, hold on to those benefits while the rest of the country suffers. We rarely get visits in rural Ireland from IDA Ireland.

The older person without a smartphone and a monthly commuter ticket is the one who loses. They are alone and isolated. When I visit them - I visit as many of them as I can - they tell me they feel forgotten. For an older person to go collect his or her pension, he or she needs a car to get to the nearest large town because the local post office is closed. He or she needs a bank account to lodge it because nobody carries that amount around but he or she has to be there before a certain time otherwise the counter will be closed. He or she will have to find the nearest supermarket because the post office is closed and so is the corner shop attached to it. If we do this to one older person, what are we doing to our younger people? We are an island for all of us. This is a serious issue and I am looking for Ministers to come to the House and address it.