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

The Minister asked a legitimate question, namely, are we saying there should be absolutely no private sector involvement in housing? What I would say to that is the State cannot rely on funds, investment entities and property and real estate firms - whatever we want to call the vultures, as they are often described these days - to solve our problem, and we have a problem. It would be very difficult for the Minister to say that the decisions of the period 2011, 2012 and 2013, which have been followed through pretty consistently, have not landed us in a massive crisis. It would be very difficult for the Minister to suggest the decisions made when Michael Noonan was the Minister have not landed us in this situation. Have we learned nothing from what the experience has been of those entities coming in here and landing us in this situation?

By the way, while we did have a housing crisis then, it was not a disaster. Some of us did warn about this in those years 2011, 2012 and 2013. When these things were in play, when the big decisions were being made, we said the decision of the State to stop the direct construction of social and affordable housing at that time was going to have disastrous consequences.