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

I worry about the constant use of terms like "prudence", "fear of over-heating", "caution" and so on. Does the Minister not believe the greatest challenges facing us now from a social and economic point of view include, at the top of the list, housing? This is now a severe crisis that is making it impossible for people to live here, especially young people. In consequence, we have to significantly ramp up from the level where we are to make it affordable and possible for people to live here. The same applies in areas like education, water infrastructure and public transport. There is talk about the fear of overheating and the need for caution but all these areas are suffering major deficits in investment. Does the Minister not believe we need radical increases in levels of investment in these areas? Otherwise, we are actually going to exacerbate the overheating measures because we will not have sufficient people here. We are now talking about labour shortages. We must ask ourselves how we are to resolve labour shortages. It seems to me we can only resolve labour shortages if we educate far more young people to do the jobs that need to be done, get people back into this country and prevent them leaving.

We are in something of a vicious circle in that sense. At the heart of resolving the vicious circle is the question of housing. It is not simply a matter of absolute supply, although we must have that too, but the supply of affordable housing. Does it concern the Minister that the last time the supply of housing increased, price went up as well and it led us into a big crash? There are real signs that could be happening again. We need a far greater supply and we must have a plan for that but, crucially, that supply cannot remain unaffordable. We cannot have a situation where supply increases but price increases with it. Otherwise we will simply be doing what we did the last time. Does the Minister recognise that as a problem? Does the Minister fear that we could be about to repeat the mistakes of the past?