I have been in the House for over ten years and in that ten years, the Government has got it wrong. That is the bottom line. It does not matter where it is; whether it is urban or rural, the Government has got it all wrong in relation to housing and the crisis has gone from bad to worse. I hear a lot of Opposition Members shouting and attacking developers. I would not be in that attacking mode at all about the people who build the houses in the first place because we would not have the houses without them. There is no point in attacking the developers. We have to look at where we can put it right. I look at different things like county development plans. A lot of Members said they have been canvassing. I have certainly been canvassing over the past few weeks down in Galway West. We are talking to the people there. The biggest issue on the door is the cost of living. That is coming up quite a lot but so is housing. People are upset, with a mother or father telling me their children had to go, not because they wanted to go but they had no choice. They would never get a home no matter how long they lived here. Even buying one is out of their reach, as is building a house. That is the thing that hurts most. For a lot of those people, it hurts them to think that their children were forced out of a country that has not really equipped itself or that has not got a real grip or understanding of the real crisis that is here. The Minister of State knows as well as I do that, down in west Cork, people come to him the same as myself who do not have a house. They are being evicted. They are upset and have concerns. It does not matter if it is a single mother or father or a couple. It affects everybody and it hurts deep. The difficulty is to try to find a home for those people. These difficulties are exacerbated because our bigger cities are bursting at the seams whereas some of our towns could take a lot of those pressures. County development plans, as they come before the people, are no longer councillor-led. They are dictated from the top. People end up getting very little chance of coming to live in areas such as mine in west Cork. Wastewater treatment plants are bursting at the seams and water systems are inadequate and cannot feed homes. People look for planning permission, whether it is one or two houses or whatever. If a developer looks for five or six, he cannot get it and he may be willing to move them on. If local people are looking for planning permission, they are being refused. From the day I was elected, there has always been a difficulty for somebody in getting planning permission. It was an absolute crisis for many people. One person in my own constituency even spent €10,000 and was refused. They spent that astonishing amount. I recall about 30 years ago, for €22,000, I had a house built with a garage next to it. Now I would hardly get off the ground with that. The bottom line is that it is difficult but it is not been made any easier. We are not concentrating on solutions. There are solutions out there and they need to be looked at going forward.

Sentiment score: -0.16