Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-05-10-Speech-4-034"
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"en.20070510.5.4-034"2
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"Mr President, I accept that in this initiative on housing we mean well. After all, having a house is critical to a family and to our communities. However, housing is not our competence, and the dilemma for our citizens is that at national level funds are always accepted, whereas guidelines and strategies are accepted or rejected as it suits. In Ireland especially there is a problem. Despite our urban strategies, families eligible for social housing wait eight years on average for a house, as an insufficient supply of social housing is being built.
This report contains many good recommendations. However, while the EU’s existing strategies recommend things like green spaces, local authorities have been taking these back and squeezing in houses, thus destroying those green spaces for children to play in, and creating concrete patches for graffiti and drugs.
Sometimes the EU recommendations are out of synch with local reality. In rural areas in Ireland it has now become very difficult for a young family to get permission to build a house. Our town planners – and they are town planners, not rural planners – insist that all new rural housing be herded into estates. This discourages young people from living in those areas.
As in all things, we need to respect subsidiarity and do comparable research to understand best practice, which we in Europe can offer as a guide. However, we also have to play our part in asking the nations serious questions about the outcome in terms of people."@en1
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