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

We have set out our positions and they are clearly divergent. However, it is necessary to answer the questions the Minister put, so that there is no suggestion that there is a lack of internal logic in the arguments that socialists are putting forward on this point. Our argument was and remains that the assets and the means by which one can produce the housing that is necessary, both financial and otherwise, were effectively in the possession of the State at that time. These were in the banks, because we bailed them out, and in the land assets and property assets necessary to deliver the housing. We made a decision in both cases to work towards handing those back to interests that were not primarily interested in solving the housing crisis but in maintaining their financial position or in benefiting from that.

I still think that argument remains the same. The Minister asks who has the capital and says that the State does not have all the capital. First, the State has fairly unlimited access to capital at the moment because of the interest rate situation. There is also huge scope for redistributional taxes in our opinion, as the Minister knows, although I will not go over that argument. Redistribution of taxes would help find the capital. We mentioned the credit unions but let us not forget the banks as well. Where are the savings? One refers to the savings of other countries as being manifest in these vulture funds in coming over here and supposedly helping us with the housing sector. We have our own savings here. Where are they? The are in credit unions and in the banks. The people who hold those savings have a bit more interest in solving the housing crisis than the venture funds, vulture funds or whatever you want to call them in New York. To me, that is self-evident.

There was a time when these funds did not exist. It was the case that 20, 30 or 40 years ago, when this country was much poorer, it was able to deliver social housing. It was able to do so far more effectively than it has been proven to be able to do in the past few decades, when the country has been much wealthier. That is our argument. There are alternative sources for the capital investment. These are the savings that exist in this country in our own banking system. We could access these savings if were to take control of that banking system, which we bailed out, and use them for societal objectives and for social objectives. To be honest, I do not think most people in this country would object to their savings being used for or directed towards solving problems like that.

On the costing of houses, Deputy Doherty has defended Sinn Féin's own position. However, the costings we put in our pre-budget submission were costed by the Minister’s Department. We used the prices for one-bedroom, two-bedroom, three-bedroom and four-bedroom, based on estimates provided by the Department, as to how much it would cost to deliver those houses. As for our proposal for more than 20,000 housing units, the pricing for them in our budget submission was based on estimates given to us by the Government.

I want to say that for the record.