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

I make no bones about it. Is the profit builders take out not just an extra cost? It inflates the cost and it would be cheaper for the State to do these things directly, to build up its own capacity and deliver infrastructure directly. NERI has spoken of a semi-State company but we think a State company should deliver the housing we need. What happened between 2002 and 2008 is proof that this is the way we should go. In that period it was primarily the private sector which was given money and it was primarily the private sector which policy favoured to deliver infrastructure and housing but it did not work for us. It caused a massive problem and led to a crash. Even when the construction industry was delivering between 70,000 and 90,000 houses per year they were unaffordable and the housing crisis got worse. It has got doubly worse now but even in that earlier period housing lists grew and social and affordable housing was not delivered. There was a complete failure to connect supply and demand and I contend that it was because development at that time was profit-driven rather than need-driven.