Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I put it to the witnesses that the problem is that it is very difficult to say what is sustainable and what will not be affected by all sorts of external and cyclical factors, many of which are out of our control. Housing, which is a particular bugbear of mine, is an example of that. Obviously, property tax is a revenue source based on property. We are now seeing how volatile property is. I will not get into that argument now. When I was speaking to a rural Deputy recently, he told me that developers down the country are sitting and waiting at the moment because property prices in the countryside are low. They could apply to get money from the banks to build, but they will not do so because there is no profit in it for them. They are going to wait and the banks are going to wait. The banks would not give them the money now anyway, for exactly the same reason. These developers are going to wait until property prices go through the roof. They are waiting for the crisis to get worse from the point of view of people on the ground, and arguably from the point of view of the economy as a whole. If we cannot house people, we cannot do much else. If we do not have basic things like housing, it is going to be a real problem for our economy, never mind for the people. Is it not the case that State intervention is the only way to address that? I suggest the only way to protect itself against that sort of volatility is for the State to have adequate stock, or to intervene when the market is failing by providing what the market is not willing to provide? That argument could be extended into a number of areas. If the State does not have a significant stake in the economy, we are just sitting back waiting for the next storm to hit us. If we are talking about protecting against boom and bust, we must realise the only way to do that is to provide for a greater level of State control over the economy. That is necessary to ensure we are not subject to whatever storm is coming down the road.