Alan Kelly (Tipperary, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will start by responding to the last speaker's questions as they are freshest in my mind. I would never want to fight with Deputy Brophy either. I stand over what I said. I was very conditional in what I said. I did not say it was everyone. I respect that everyone has a choice to make in every individual situation. This is not confined to local authorities. It might be more prevalent in places other than in local authorities. I have found in the overwhelming majority of cases that councillors have been of the Deputy's view when he was a member of a local authority. I know of many, dare I say it, brave councillors who would face a fairly significant crowd and stand by their principle and I know of many who did that recently, and I truly respect them. It would be wrong of me to say that I have not experienced the other case as well where people have lectured or waxed lyrical about the need for housing in a certain area and demanded such provision and then, when a proposal was put forward, had the opposite opinion. I am not talking about a generic case of someone opposing something because they believe in it and still demanding social housing. That is one thing, and that is fine, but where an elected representative says that social housing is needed in a certain area, they get a page spread about that in their local newspaper, and when a proposal is made two weeks or one month later, they oppose it. That is contradictory whatever way one looks at it. I accept these are all individual cases. I am not talking generally. I am not talking about everyone. In the majority of cases this does not happen, but it does happen on occasion and there is no point in saying that it does not.

I very much take the Deputy Brophy's point regarding local authorities entering the market. A few members, including Deputy Brendan Ryan, mentioned this. To be fair to them, local authorities do not enter the market in many different areas. For instance, they do not enter where first-time buyers are actively seeking to buy and so on.

If they find out it is a first-time buyer, they generally pull out. There is a balancing act here and the Deputy knows what it is. We will not have the supply coming on stream for a couple of years so we need to supply houses so they need to use their judgment there. There is an element of trust in respect of local authorities using their judgment to go out and get houses but I take all the points that have been made. It is a well-made point because it is obviously pushing it up on others but the guidelines around how to do involve not hitting first-time buyers, actively observing the area and ensuring they do that.

The question of the 10% to 15% is one for my successor, whoever he or she may be. It might be the Deputy. It could be anyone.