Patricia Stephenson (Social Democrats)

The revised NDP could and should have been a turning point and a moment to finally reset our approach to housing and infrastructure delivery in Ireland. Unfortunately, I see very little ambition or vision in the revised document. One of the biggest infrastructure challenges we have in Ireland is housing. We have over 16,000 people in homeless accommodation and that includes a horrible figure of 5,000 children living in emergency accommodation. It is a shameful record that we are breaking month after month. Of course, that is not telling the whole picture because there is overcrowding in people’s homes, women living in refuges and a generation stuck in their bedrooms, none of whom are counted in those numbers. When we are talking about this we need to emphasise that it is not abstract. These are people - families, children and older people - who are all living with this continuous trauma of having no place to call home. Yet the NDP contains no radical change of direction, no credible path to end homelessness and no real strategy to deliver genuinely affordable homes at scale.

What we have is not a blueprint for transformation. It is a slim document of less than 50 pages offering big numbers but very little clarity or detail. There is precious little detail about what projects will actually be delivered or when and how we will avoid the delays and overruns that have become the norm, such as the National Children’s Hospital scandal. The Government’s problem is a lack of ambition but also a lack of delivery. Time and again we have seen big promises and targets that quickly slip out of reach. Housing delivery has completely stalled. Of course our energy and water systems are running close to capacity and in many areas are at total capacity. That means that in places such as where I am from in Carlow or Kilkenny, people cannot build new developments in the towns they are from.

We have not had any major transport projects completed. The result is felt by every family but particularly those unable to afford a home, those stuck in traffic and those who worry whether the infrastructure they rely on can cope with the increased demand.

Infrastructure needs to be planned as a whole and housing, transport, health, energy, water, education and childcare need to be considered holistically so that communities can properly thrive. Otherwise we are simply building isolated projects rather than building a future for this country. People deserve certainty. They do not need slogans; they need homes, transport, schools and hospitals. They need them to be delivered on time and within budget. The Government must stop announcing plans with little detail and, rather, start building an Ireland that people can live and work in.

Before the Minister of State came in, Senator Flaherty said the Opposition just likes to complain about Ireland and how awful the country is. I do not feel like that at all. I am very proud of Ireland and I believe it could be a brilliant country but I honestly think that people are struggling now. If Senator Flaherty has not seen that on the ground, perhaps he is not canvassing or knocking on doors in the same communities I am, where people do not have places to live and cannot get childcare facilities close to their jobs. Good luck if you are a disabled person in a wheelchair trying to book yourself onto a train to go to work or travel to another part of the country because there is one slot available on four carriages on a train route. That is just the reality of many people in this country, particularly people with disabilities. It is really important to highlight that.

Obviously, we have a massive issue around procurement. I hope to get into more detail on that with the Minister when he comes before the infrastructure committee later. We have an endless challenge with procurement in this country. I mentioned the National Children’s Hospital but we have other examples. We need to understand what is going wrong with our tendering processes, why so many change orders are being put in and what is happening at the level of the different companies responsible for this.

I also want to lend my support to what Senator Tully said about collective bargaining. We should not be issuing public contracts to any company which does not have the right to unionise or collective bargaining. We have a two-tier system in Ireland whereby for workers in the public system, such as teachers or nurses, it is fine and they can have collective bargaining but someone in the private sector might not get that same right. We need to instil that as a right. We have the minimum wage directive from the European Union. We need to instil that and legislate for that. Until that is done, there should be no public contracts delivered to companies which do not have the right to collective bargaining.