Pat Rabbitte (Dublin South West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

To return to the point the Governor made about extending credit to builders and developers in the context of the supply problem that we have, I can understand why he said what he did, but it leaves the Minister for Finance or the Minister with responsibility for housing with a difficult problem in the context of the acute shortage of supply, at least in the capital city, where there are few enough builders left standing and where banks are saying that they will give them only X% or they do not want to know them, certainly before the stress tests. I have been told by developers that they were told by banks five years ago that the banks had had a bad experience with them and that they would not extend any money to them. The point I am making is that it takes 12 to 18 months to prepare a site and get houses up, and if the builders that are left standing are in deep trouble and cannot carry that, we will not be able to deal with the supply side issue with the kind of despatch that is needed. Every third morning we will have people concerned on the community side - charities and all the rest - adducing very sad cases. Those people do tremendous work but they are definitely in danger of being canonised by the media before they pass away, while the Government is pretty helpless in terms of addressing the supply-side issue. In terms of solutions with regard to raising the rent supplement, most economists would say that if we raise the rent supplement, within three months rents will have caught up with it again. That is not a solution to the issue. I would like to hear the Governor's response on that point.