Taoiseach accuses socialists of wanting to ‘segregate communities’

The Taoiseach has claimed that socialists want to “segregate” communities and divide them into council estates in one area and private estates in another.

Leo Varadkar hit out after Solidarity TD Mick Barry highlighted four planned estates in Dublin and Cork which are to be designated for social and affordable housing.

The Cork North-Central TD said all four were for “100 per cent social and public affordable housing, without the need for any privatisation whatsoever”.

But one of them in Damastown village in the Taoiseach’s Dublin West constituency “has been on the desk of the Minister for Housing for the guts of a year”.

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He asked the Taoiseach to comment on the idea of “public housing on public land, which is a good and viable alternative to the Government’s plan for mass privatisation of land through the Land Development Agency”.

But Mr Varadkar accused him of “play acting on an important and serious issue”.

He said Mr Barry knew the councils had plans for those estates in Dublin, a mix of “some private housing for young people who want to buy and own their first house, some affordable housing for people who qualify for it, and social housing for those on the housing list. That is the right way to go about this.”

Mixed communities

He said that there should be integrated mixed communities “in order that everyone can live together and we can build communities as well as houses”.

But he claimed that “what the socialists want is something different. They want segregation, to divide people and to have people living in council estates in one area and private estates in the other.

“They want a wall built between the two. They want to divide our society into people who live in different areas, with some people paying for everything but qualifying for nothing. It is the wrong way of doing it.”

Mr Barry said the Damastown project was for 1,200 social and affordable houses. A site on Old Whitechurch Road in Cork planned the development of 800 social and affordable houses.

Some 892 social and affordable homes are planned for Kilcarbery Grange in South Dublin County Council area and 532 houses with a similar mix in Belcamp Lane in Dublin City Council area.