Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

When I was a local councillor in the early 2000s, a house in the housing estate in which I grew up came on the market. Usually, in these cases, the local authority would quickly purchase the house. It was good value and a house built by the council. The Department refused to allow the council to buy it, however. It was bought for €42,000.

Since then, the owner of that house has been subsidised through rent supplement and HAP. The State has paid in value multiples of what it would have cost to build that house on day one. That was as a direct result of an ideological driven position that has been adopted by the Department. Has ideology been put aside? Are we ready to go back to basics, namely local authorities building and purchasing homes which in turn will alleviate the pressures on rents and return them to a reasonable level? Are we at that point that we can address the fundamental core problem that lies at the heart of the reason we are in the middle of a housing crisis today?