Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I have listened patiently and carefully to the debate for the past hour or so and am a little surprised by the tone of it for this simple reason. Some of us are coming late to the table on this argument. Some of us were here before, a long time ago, and raised again and again the question of the danger of growing the rental property sector in Dublin and the surrounding towns and cities. Nobody raised a finger. Nobody was willing to stand up and be counted then, despite the fact that I tabled countless parliamentary questions drawing attention to that growth, which occurred for no reason at all other than for certain parties to get a hold of the market. That was long before the crises started. It was the wrong development at the wrong time, and people stood by and looked at it and never said a word about it. It went on from there because the argument in favour of this growth at that time was that it was much cheaper to rent a house. What a load of crazy nonsense. The point I made at the time was that it would soon become more expensive to rent a house than to buy it, and that is what happened. No disrespect at all to our friends in the Opposition, but, despite all these arguments, nobody said anything about this at the time. A couple of us were on our own pointing out what would happen, that is, that the market would be concentrated in a particular area, which would lead to a housing shortage for people who wanted to buy their own homes or to get local authority houses from the local authority. Every kind of turn was put upon it at the time. Now this has become obvious to everybody. Everybody is pointing out what went wrong. Some of us pointed out all these things before they happened. That is one thing about politics. We need to learn to identify the dangers before they occur. We are not good at that and we are not improving either. We need to concentrate on that and do it because, if we do not, we will have calamity after calamity and we will not be able to comment until after, when we will say, "My God, how did this happen? Somebody is to blame for this." "Ourselves" is the answer to that question. I was a strong opponent of this policy at the time. My arguments were proven correct. I do not at all expect anybody to jump up and down and say, "You were very wise to say those things at the time." It was, however, unpopular to say them and to speak in that fashion. I am now repeating what I have said before, as did a number of other people. The core of the argument at the time was that people had a natural inclination to own their own homes, and means should have been found at all times to accommodate them. It does not matter where they come from or what their background is; they are entitled to aspire to that, and we need to help them all the time.

Whatever happens from here on in, let us do the best we can. The die was cast a long time ago but we have to deal with this now. I know things will come around. Wheels turn and come back to where they started, usually, and that will happen again. How soon it will happen I do not know, but I do know one thing: young people - this affects everybody but young people more than anybody else - who are anxious to own their own homes or willing to accept local authority houses or affordable houses they can purchase, or whatever way it comes, want to do that all the time. That is part and parcel of their upbringing. They have always wanted to do that. It is part of their independence. It is also part of the taxation system because, obviously, the fewer affordable houses available to people and the higher the rent goes, the more they have to be paid. It is an economic issue as well, not only for the potential homeowners but for the whole State. It is therefore in everybody's interest to deal with the issues before they occur, preferably, but still we have to deal with them now and we will.

Chairman, I thank you for the opportunity to speak.