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

I am slightly amused by the fact that there are two versions of the Minister's speech and that the difference between them is that in one there is a reference to the famous statement by Charlie McCreevy that, "When I have it, I spend it", and the extreme damage that policy pursued by a Fianna Fáil Government did in creating the conditions for the economic collapse in 2008. I am curious why the Minister included that in the first version of his speech but then removed it.

I wonder whether his Government is not guilty of making the same mistake, particularly in the area of the significant expenditures that are going out on housing assistance payment, the rental accommodation scheme and leasing arrangements to private property interests because of the failure of the State to directly invest in and construct its own social housing stock. As a result, we are currently in a situation, and will be for the foreseeable future as I read the plans of the Government, of approximately €1 billion, a figure that will probably rise every year, going out in those sorts of payments to private property developers. Is that not a very significant and poor example of spending money in a profligate way that we should avoid? We need to replace that expenditure with direct investment in our own social housing stock, where the rental revenue will come back to the State and it would be able to reinvest those funds in more social housing.

A figure being bandied around for Housing for All is that it will cost €4 billion a year. I ask the Minister to confirm whether that is accurate. In our discussions with the Parliamentary Budget Office, it pointed out that the direct Exchequer funding is significantly less than that and that the Government is essentially hoping that more than 50% of the spending that would be required to deliver the 330,000 houses by the end of the period covered by Housing for All will come from the private sector. I ask the Minister to clarify that point. I will put all my questions now because I do not want the Minister to talk down the clock.