I was sad to see the senior Minister leave but the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins, knows full well what I will say. It is over for him and the senior Minister when it comes to providing housing and developing the level of housing required in this country. I refer to what I predicted on 27 April 2012 in this very House. I encourage the Minister of State to go back and look at the speech. It still stands. All the investment the Minister of State likes will not catch up. Going from €300 million to €1.4 billion or even now, as the senior Minister said, €11.7 billion will be great for a government in two terms' time but it is over for this Government because the lead time is five to seven years. If you do not have the infrastructure, you cannot build the houses. It is like someone trying to perform operations without oxygen or blood. It is impossible. This House, previous Governments, bad politics and short-termism have ensured we have the housing crisis we have today and that the young and not so young people of Ireland cannot afford housing. We cannot build it because politics has failed, this Chamber has failed, the Minister of State's Governments have failed and his party has failed. It is as simple as that. We have never put in the investment we require. In my town of Nenagh, we have a project of 1,000 houses which I helped to be built. The project for wastewater has been pushed back for one year to 18 months to be profiled. Tipperary County Council was treated disgracefully by not being told this was being profiled and pushed back. The reason it was profiled and pushed back was there was not the investment to actually do it. Where we as a country require infrastructure for housing, we will develop that infrastructure but it will be too late for this Government because of the decisions made by past Governments not to invest in what was right. In this Chamber, politics has failed the people of Ireland. It has failed the young people of Ireland who needed that foresight and needed infrastructure to be put in place to provide the houses they require - social, affordable and private - which will not be in place because of bad decision-making and bad politics in this bloody Chamber.

Sentiment score: -0.06