Paddy Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to follow up on a point raised by Senator O'Donnell.

An article in today's Irish Independentstates that the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund supports a lender called Activate Capital. It has backed Cairn Homes to buy the RTE site for a huge amount of money. It was probably bidding against other companies, which may also have been backed by the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund. In this case, the State could be bumping up the price of homes unbeknownst to itself. It would be better if State funds were used more directly with developers and builders to build houses rather than to be helping companies such as Cairn Homes, which might have thousands of sites around Dublin and which is quoted on the stock market in London. That company is, in its own right, capable of getting funding elsewhere rather than from the State's pension fund, which should be helping smaller banks here to fund developers and builders who are building. The Minister should look at the issue. The smaller companies seem to be starved of capital. Any builder I talk to will say that he cannot get money to develop and yet here we are giving €50 million, through the Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, to a publicly quoted company to buy a site close to the centre of Dublin.