Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted that the Minister reads our alternative budgets. Maybe they will give him some ideas on how to change direction. The Minister has been in the driving seat and this is only going one direction, which is that house prices and rents are going up and up while availability is going down and down. That is the reality and no one else is to blame. The Minister is right: this is where we make the decisions. He has made the wrong ones time and again. It was only when the public called him out and asked how under God he was allowing these funds to come in and snap up homes from ordinary families that were trying to get homes and start their lives that he was embarrassed into scrambling his officials. Within a fortnight, he had to introduce emergency legislation that he had voted against six months prior. That is the reality.

I am sure the Minister knows how the financing of homebuilding occurs. He will understand that there is Exchequer expenditure and non-Exchequer expenditure. That is why the figures he has misrepresented to the committee are wrong. The €3 billion he mentioned is Exchequer expenditure. I encourage the Minister not to embarrass himself any further and to examine the policy and start implementing the delivery of 20,000 social, affordable and cost-rental homes. But, no. He has spent the past half hour defending the fact that he will continue to support institutional investors coming to Ireland and purchasing apartments in bulk. Some 85% of completions in this city are apartments. They are not available to ordinary buyers and do not even go on the market.

Of those apartments that do go on the market, they cost €450,000 or €500,000. That is what the Minister is defending. Deputy Durkan spoke about how he called this out, and fair play to him if he did, but one did not need be a genius to call out what was happening in the housing sector. I mean the Deputy no offence.