Eoghan Murphy (Dublin Bay South, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

We all knew that the cuts that were made to the capital budget at the time would create future risks for this country, but we had to do it to protect current spending, people's salaries, their pension payments, their social welfare protections. That was a decision that was made at the time. I was a backbencher in government and I stood fully behind it. It was the right decision to make when one looks at what has happened. Unfortunately, there has been under-investment in housing. The Fine Gael Government in 2011 did not make the decision to almost exclusively outsource the social housing bill to the private sector. We are the Government which has corrected that decision and brought that responsibility back into the State and the allocation of taxpayer's resources. That is why we sit here and talk about how we are going to spend €6 billion.

I thought we would talk about more than €11 billion in the national development plan for increasing the stock of social housing. We cannot rely exclusively on one stream of delivery for anything or else we will become over exposed potentially in a future crisis. It is very important that we do that. When we look at increasing the stock of social housing and the 50,000 we have, a multiplicity of streams are available, direct build, local authority housing, housing bodies, acquisitions, regeneration and long-term leasing.