Mr. Neil McDonnell:

We are often asked that question. I am sad enough to carry around a 1994 payslip to illustrate the scale of the problem now. In 1994 when I was 28 years old I was on a Defence Forces salary of £20,600, which was enough, pre-benchmarking, to buy me a house in Lucan for £53,000. My 28 year old equivalent today is on a salary of €38,000. Not only can he or she not buy the same house, he or she cannot even afford to rent it. We need substantial intervention at local authority level. My 28 year old equivalent today would require a salary of around €98,000 to buy the same house. We all know that that is not going to happen. Unfortunately, some people think this will be passed on to small employers to pay €98,000, but that is not going to happen either. There must be an intervention to provide social housing via local authorities or some other solution as otherwise it will all break down.