I apologise that I could not be here earlier. We were dealing with the ambulance strike due to take place next Tuesday so I missed the earlier contributions. I do not know who wrote the Government's countermotion this morning but the people sitting around the Cabinet table who signed off on it this afternoon and the person who wrote this have their heads in the clouds. Everything in the Government's countermotion suggest an aloof and, worse, an indifference or callousness towards the appalling conditions in which far too many council tenants in this city find themselves living. Of course, there has been progress - none of us is denying that - particularly in the north-west inner city in recent years in Constitution Hill, Dorset Street, and O'Devaney Gardens. That is all welcome but the context is that there are 211 flat complexes across the Dublin City Council area and just 12 are either undergoing major regeneration or subject to some sort of plan. There is a hell of a lot to be done. I am in no way hearing from Government that it gets the depth of the problem with the flat complexes in our capital city or has any idea of the impact of its short-sightedness, particularly when we see the stalemate between it and DCC on Oliver Bond Street flats. The news that emerged today regarding those flats is disgraceful. We have listened for many weeks to the Taoiseach talking about how local authorities are well-resourced, lots of money going into the housing budget for local authorities and money having to be carefully spent. Hundreds of thousands of euro have been spent trying to get the plans for the Oliver Bond Street complex to where they are, yet the Department has been blindsided by the desire for volume, which we all share, but cannot see the short-term and long-term costs to families continuing to live in squalor in the flats. It is condemning those people to all the social and health costs that with it. We know from research conducted by the Robert Emmet Community Development Project and Trinity College that children in the Oliver Bond Street flats are 2.4 times more likely to have asthma relative to the general population. There is still not a huge volume of evidence relating to the causation but the correlation is enormous. We have to draw an inference that suggests people's lives and health are badly affected from the people who come to my clinics, in the flats I step into, the babies on inhalers before the age of 18 months, and the children missing school days because of chest and throat infections due to the mould on their walls and around their windows, mildew and fungus growing from their ceilings. Year after year people paint their walls. Who paints their walls every year? The people in the flat complexes in my constituency in Dublin Central do. It is unacceptable and outrageous. They are trying to cover up a problem that will not go away because of construction defects, yet the Government continues to say plenty of money is going into housing. It is not going into flat maintenance or regeneration and it must. The reality is hundreds of flat complexes are old and in need of regeneration but there are also new complexes like Blackhall Place, which is only 30 years old and won awards at the time. It was poorly built and now residents have to deal with issues with drinking water and drainage. I spoke to a lady last Saturday on Poplar Row whose insulation is soaking. That is a result of Dublin City Council dropping the ball and the Government. We talk about fire safety defects and the enormous bill for private apartment complexes but there is also a massive issue with the Government dropping the ball on building standards in flat complexes in this city and beyond. A big concern I have in all of this is that there have been so many broken promises to residents in flat complexes over the years from successive Ministers and public representatives in Dublin Central. We were told Croke Villas was due to start in 2019. It is still to happen. Matt Talbot Court is still standing there. It was supposed to be finished in 2022. Gardiner Street flats and Dunne Street flats were supposed to start in 2021. There is still no progress. I know all too often that Dublin City Council and the Government will point to the pandemic. We saw the Mater getting its act together during the pandemic and building much-needed hospital bed space, but when it comes to flat complexes we have seen no progress. It is important to say that the corrosive impact of the broken promises is not just for the residents but is right across the communities. We are seeing that manifest with the local election results in 2024 and what may happen in our constituency over the coming weeks. This Government has to wake up to the reality that there is a serious crisis when people are living in those sorts of degrading conditions. Deputy Devine mentioned the rent increases. I tell the Minister of State clearly that I am not happy about the rent increases. It is crap that anybody has to pay a rent increase in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis. Dublin City Council executives dropped the ball by not having a rate review for over 30 years, but the Government has also starved Dublin City Council of funding for refurbishment and regeneration. The reality is that the €30 million that is going to be raised by the rent increases is supposed to go into maintenance. We will be doing our damnedest to make sure it does, but it is a drop in the ocean in terms of what is needed. There needs to be a honest conversation about the expectations for all the people I am delighted to see in the Gallery today and what they can expect over the coming years. Let us look at the figures. To try to do decent maintenance across four complexes will cost approximately €70 million. To fully regenerate major complexes will cost hundreds of millions of euro. We have to hear from the Government whether it is willing to stump up those hundreds of millions of euro to fully regenerate those flat complexes in coming years or whether it will merely involve replacement of windows, doors and ventilation, which is important, but does not go far enough in making the lives of people better. It is not all about money. It is about capacity and resources. In local authorities across this country, we have seen a hollowing-out of staffing over many years. Some local authorities have tried to start apprenticeship programmes in their maintenance departments, but we have far too few. If we are to seriously have a planned maintenance programme across all local authorities we need to see leadership from the Government on this. We need to see direction from the Government to make sure it is direct employment within local authorities so the day-to-day maintenance can be dealt with and the real money can go into the issues of cold walls that need the insulation and broken windows. Far too much of the money at the moment is going into day-to-day stuff. None of it, or far too little, is going into proper maintenance and upkeep of flat complexes that are many years old. For many years there have been residents and residents’ groups fighting tooth and nail on this. I know in my constituency ICON has been to the fore in leading the charge to bring people together in recent years. I pay particular tribute to Belinda Nugent and others working there and looking at this as a systemic issue rather than just going back and forth between maintenance staff in Dublin City Council and individual tenants. The reality is that we have a systemic crisis. There are far too many children growing up in degrading conditions in our flat complexes. At the very least, for the dignity of families in this country we need to see a change in tone and attitude to funding local authorities from this Government.

Sentiment score: -0.08