The leader of the Greens, Mr Trevor Sargent, has launched a scathing attack on the Government and its supporters, accusing the "backers" of Fianna Fáil and the PDs of hoarding land to inflate the price of housing.
Opening his party's annual convention last night, Mr Sargent alleged that supporters of both the Coalition partners were sitting on vast swathes of rezoned land which they were refusing to develop in order to distort the housing market.
While Mr Sargent did not name any such Government supporters, he claimed they were "drip-feeding houses onto the market only quick enough to ensure house prices remain impossibly high".
Some 600 activists are expected to attend the weekend event at the Galway Bay Hotel in Salthill from which Mr Sargent will tonight make the first live television address from a Green party convention.
As the party gets ready to field more than 130 candidates in the local and European elections, Mr Sargent told delegates that their task was to prepare for a historic shift forward in the history of the party.
Mr Sargent said the Green political philosophy was selfless, and he contrasted this with the "legacy of corruption" under scrutiny at the tribunals. Fianna Fáil and the PDs could no longer claim to have concern for community life, the homeless or climate change, he said.
"An EU report this week acknowledges the country can create wealth, but our Government is rightly slammed for the enormous gap it has increased between rich and poor, and its failure to tackle climate change and protect the environment for this and future generations."
Mr Sargent said the decentralisation and one-off rural housing policies smacked of "blatant opportunism", and such policies served to highlight the Government's willingness to say anything to stay in power.
"We are in Galway to recognise how vital proper decentralisation is for Ireland. We have a vision for the west which is strong and effectively a counter-balance to the voracious concrete jungle in the east which is sucking the rest of Ireland dry," he said.
"Minister 'Concrete' Cullen pops up with his rural housing guidelines to create huge future problems of car-dependency and water pollution. His final sentence of death for proper planning is on page 8 of his new guidelines where he declares his diktat is to supersede the sustainable development strategy."
Mr Sargent called on the Government to reinstate the western rail corridor and said that idle rail track land between Sligo and Ennis was worth €2 billion. He suggested that the development of a rail service linking Sligo with Limerick via Galway and Ennis "with the track already in place", would cost some €500 million.
"It makes absolutely no sense to discuss ... a €1 billion project to provide a rail tunnel under the Phoenix Park in Dublin while depriving the west of such a vital piece of infrastructure."
Mr Sargent also paid tribute to his election organiser, Ms Eve Jenkins, who died unexpectedly on Wednesday. "Eve set the high standards for us all, from the presentation of literature to the ambitious expectations for everyone she worked with."
