Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

Professor FitzGerald said he advocated taxation on the interest that people who bought their homes would pay. That would increase an already heavy burden of repayments on ordinary working people who are buying homes, leaving aside the speculators, the portfolio assemblers, etc.

Did you consider that perhaps those who were making massive profits on the other side of the equation were the ones who should be hit, in order to hit speculative profits etc.?

Finally, considering construction grew to almost one fifth of the economy, accounting for hundreds of thousands of jobs, was consideration given to the fact that the banks involved, the companies and the developers had massive economic power? Is it healthy for social ends that such power would exist in a few hands? Should that power not be in public ownership and under democratic control.