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

Yes, Donald Rumsfeld. It is a known unknown and we know what we have to do to guard against its potential impact, that is no hard borders and as little friction between ourselves and Britain as possible. At least we know what we have to do. What do we have to do to protect against the possible dangers of a downturn? From where are those dangers likely to come? To me, where we should gear ourselves up and where we should invest is dependent on where those risks are most likely to come. There is no doubt about demand for property and housing. We have a demand and we have got to meet that demand, and there is no two ways about it. Is Mr. Coffey worried about another speculative property bubble here and the fact that we are actually repeating the madness of the previous downturn, which largely resulted from property speculation? What is actually happening is that there is an awful lot of speculation and not lot of building. That is a recipe for a repeat of the previous circumstances, particularly when one considers that the level of demand is objectively big but that, in effective terms, it is weak. People do not have the money to buy property. Are we facing into a possible property slowdown again?