Paul Murphy: Bertie Ahern's Racist Diversion Exposed

Thanks, Teann Comhairle. Taoiseach, your former leader and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has engaged in discussing racism in Dublin Central, saying we have, quote, too many immigrants, saying the ones I worry about are the Africans. We can't be taking in people from the Congo and all these places, saying he worries about the next generation of Muslims. Bertie Ahern doing it makes it very blatant what the agenda is. Scapegoat immigrants, divide ordinary people. Why? So nobody blames Bertie Ahern, Fianna Fáil and the landlords and developers you have allowed to profit from the housing crisis. People from the Congo didn't take corrupt payments from developers to blow up the property bubble. They were never found by a tribunal to have been untruthful in explaining how 400,000 euros in today's money passed through their bank accounts. Muslim children didn't crash the economy, causing years of misery and austerity for ordinary people. Unlike Fianna Fáil and Fianna Gael, they never rolled out the red carpet for developers and vulture funds. They weren't the ones who sowed the seeds of the current housing disaster and they weren't the ones who refused to maintain council flats and then voted to increase council rents. All of this is an act of mass distraction from what? From the horrendous conditions that people in Dublin Central, many of them, are forced to face every day. Right across Dublin city there are council tenants living in conditions that nobody should be asked to live in. Yesterday in Sheridan Court on Dorset Street we met a single mother with two children with additional needs. She's three months living without usable water because it's scalding hot. Three months. She has to bring her children to her mother's house to bathe them in Fairview. Her bedroom is severely damp and mouldy. This is her bathroom. Look at the mould. Another woman is sleeping in the living room as her bedroom has been rendered uninhabitable due to leakages in the ceilings and in the walls. This is the wall in, this is the hole in the wall of her bedroom. There's another resident's ceiling collapsed in places in January. Her flat is not in a livable condition but she has nowhere else to go. This is her ceiling. The only work done for the people in Sheridan Court has been superficial. But it's not just Sheridan Court, it's right across Dublin City. And then to add insult to injury, Dublin City Council has hiked these people's rents by 30%. An amount that many of them simply cannot afford. Councillors from Fianna Fáil, Fianna Gael, Labour and the Greens shamefully voted against a budget amendment that would have stopped that rent hike. I have two simple questions for you Taoiseach. I want answers to them. One, will you commit to the residents of Sheridan Court and other flats around Dublin City that this treatment will not continue, that people in 2026 won't be asked to live like this? And secondly, will you support a reversal of these unfair rent increases in Dublin City and drop your agenda to hike council rents right across the country? We have a very clear asylum system in this country which is fair and robust and I don't approve of any commentary that would in any way undermine any particular ethnicity or any person with a particular ethnic background and I've been very clear about that. And my understanding is that Mr Heron, former Taoiseach, has resiled from those comments and says there's no issue with people who come through our asylum process. But I want to be very clear from my perspective and my party's perspective that we do not approve of those specific comments and they were in a conversation which was subsequently published which was not there for a distraction process by anybody here because no one could anticipate that any commentary of that kind would be in the public domain. But be that as it may, our position is very clear. We do have a fair and robust asylum process which has accelerated a lot and Mr O'Callaghan has outlined that. And then we have a broader migration narrative. People come from Europe, from the EFTA countries and beyond who work in our economy and who work in our health service as well. And we have many Irish citizens with different ethnic backgrounds who play a very full and meaningful contribution to Irish life. In terms of the broader issue then of terms of housing, this government in particular over the last number of years has substantially step changed the provision of social housing. This year up to 9,000 built compared to very low numbers four or five years ago. And so there's been a very substantial step change in the provision of public housing itself. And there is also significant funding made available to local authorities and particularly Dublin City Corporation Council in respect of regeneration and in respect of refurbishment and maintenance. Now in the first instance it's a matter for Dublin City Council to make sure that its housing stock is properly maintained and refurbished. And you know we establish local authorities, we give them powers and we give them remit. Any time they do anything then the Dáil in a reflex or elements of the Dáil want to come back in and say well local authority doesn't have any sort of space or any parameters in which they can develop policies themselves. These are elected representatives of many many parties including your own and they have to organize and run their councils in a sustainable manner. That's a matter for the councils. Government doesn't dictate every single item of local authority policy. What we have tried to do in the last while is to say to councils they need to zone more land for housing. Don't know whether you agree with that or not but we believe they do because we need more look we need more space for local authority housing, social housing, sorry affordable housing and affordable rental as well. And that is the most fundamental way to meet the housing needs of people in Dublin Central and indeed across the country. Yeah and Bertie Hearn I'll just say this that what people say when they don't think they're being recorded is actually more valuable than what they say when they do know they're being recorded. And it suggests a dirty game used on doors by Fianna Fáil to divide and rule ordinary people. To have them not blaming the people you represent, the developers, the landlords, the people who get rich from the housing crisis. Instead it's better to blame the people from Congo or wherever else. In terms of the council flats and the rents issue I mean I don't think you can have it both ways. You're the Taoiseach. You're the leader of a party which has councillors for example. So you do have a responsibility and a connection with the votes for example to increase council rents. Do you stand over those increases or not? And they're not doing that out of nowhere. That's a nationally driven project. You look at your own programme for government increasing council rents. You look at this new programme from which hasn't been published yet which points to massive increases in council rents. You point it look to the plan to merge cost rental and social housing. But the other thing it's the department. Taoiseach will now respond Deputy Murphy. Same as everybody else your time is up Deputy. Taoiseach please. First of all that was an unacceptable comment you made in terms that it's not a fenophile approach. That's not a fenophile policy. And by the way you're not shy yourself in terms of mischaracterising people, misspinning and deliberately exaggerating positions of different politicians on an ongoing basis. You're no angel yourself when it comes to politics and don't pretend that you are. The other problem is on councils Deputy. I've been on a city council. I've always divided the council between those who actually genuinely want to govern or run a city as opposed to those who just oppose everything and never voted for a budget in their life. I don't know did you ever vote for a budget in your life on a city council? Probably. Those you represent you never do. You want more and more and more, more services, services there, services there. But when it comes to the annual budget you guys never vote for them. But other politicians have to stop up with a bit of guts and a bit of courage and vote and make sure a city runs. And that's the difference between your politics and the politics of the majority.