Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

That quite considerably narrows down what can be done. There is a stranglehold on what can be done. We all appreciate the collective difficulties of the witnesses, but we also have a difficulty which is pressing and becoming more so as the hours go by. It is not a question of avoiding the issue and hoping it will go away. These issues will not go away. Young people are now desperate about obtaining a home by one means or another. We have little to offer them.

We accept the rules, but they have to become amenable to the needs of the community at large in the country. If they do not, then the rules fall into disrepute. What incentive is there for local authorities to hand over their lands to private housing bodies? Is it not much more efficient for local authorities to develop the lands? How efficient and cost-effective is it for private housing bodies to obtain lands for nothing from the State through local authorities at a cost of, for example €1 per housing site, and take out 100% loans to build them? That is what the capital allowance scheme involves. It has now been phased out, to some extent, but the same general principle applies. The Chairman is a lot more intelligent than I am.

I cannot understand how it is expected we can solve a housing problem that way. Like my colleague, Deputy Brophy, I believe housing bodies are unsuitable. Their structure is unsuitable to handle the magnitude of the problem. They did not, could not and will not deal with it. That is not due to a reluctance on their part, it is because they are more suited to dealing with niche markets, such as special needs and sheltered housing, at which they are excellent. They display 100% efficiency in that regard. Nobody would quibble with that view but in the context of the general issue of the magnitude of the housing requirements, they are unsuitable. Their structure is not right.

There are - or at least there were - approximately €90 billion in personal savings in this country, unless somebody spent the money since I last counted. I made a submission on the matter to the Department of Finance and received a negative response. Is there any way those personal savings could be utilised over a period in light of the seriousness of the housing problem?