Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I apologise for being late. It has been a very interesting debate, the part of it that I have heard. Obviously, the crisis exists but we have the land, the capacity to build, we have people who want to move into the houses and different ways of finding the finance, some which will work and some which will not. It seems the best thing to do is to get all the heads and all the expertise together - Mr. O'Kelly referred to the experience in France and elsewhere - to find a way to do it. It is just a matter of finding that way. Of course, it is also a matter of getting around the rules.

There are many large pension and investment funds - Canada is often mentioned to me - and there is a lot of money that people want to invest in countries like Ireland in solid 20 or 30-year investments with a low return but nonetheless a significant and constant return. Do the witnesses think we should be chasing these funds in terms of a new vehicle, which the witnesses mentioned, or whatever? Do they think we should be saying to these funds that we have planning permission for a certain number of houses on which we can guarantee a certain income and asking them to build them and we could lease or rent them on a long-term basis? Is that something that ought to be considered? It seems an obvious way of attracting significant investment that the State does not have to provide but benefits directly and immediately the citizens who want to live in those houses. That makes a lot of sense to me.

This country suffered greatly as a result of the financial collapse. The euro is still in existence because of what happened in this country. The issues we had and the way we dealt with them means that we are now ranked seventh in the league of most efficient economies. Is it not time to have a social dividend from the EU as a result of everything that we have done and obeying all the rules? If I am right, the programme for Government makes an indirect reference at least to making representations to the EU on this issue of housing. Is there potential in this regard for seeking separate and significant leeway for us in terms of meeting those needs?

Apart from the huge job losses, another significant impact of the recession is the appalling misery in which tens of thousands of people are currently living. We are entitled to a social dividend in that context.

There is a lot of land in State ownership, including that held by local authorities, CIE, the ESB and so forth. We should be building on that land. Perhaps that is not an issue upon which the NTMA's representatives wish to comment. There are approximately 200 acres of State-owned lands at Gormanston Camp and a proposal was put forward a number of years ago to build social and affordable housing on 60 acres of that land. It is not a criticism to say that we need new thinking in our Departments in order to push solutions that have not been tried before. We need to exploit all of the assets available to the fullest in order that we might build affordable and social housing.