Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

No, I do not doubt the truthfulness of what the Deputy says but I am respectfully making the point that there are families elsewhere in the city and in the Deputy's constituency who I hope will be able to move into those properties and they will be a home for them. That is part of what we need. We need a private sector that will build more homes. When the homes are built, if the ownership changes, I do not want them to be vacant for long. I want citizens living in them. I want people having stable homes. I want families confident that they are able to get an apartment or house that they will live in. But in order for that to happen the private sector has to play a part. I hope that there will soon be people living in all those vacant homes that the Deputy mentioned and when there is people living in them there will be a housing need met and that does have a value. What has a greater human value to me is the situation that the Deputy is referring to of a family crying in his office who are worried about where they are going to be in a few weeks and worried about becoming homeless.

Can I give an individual response to the individual circumstances the Deputy described? In truth, I cannot. I have a collective responsibility to the country as Minister for Finance to make money available for public service and investment and also to maintain financial stability and to try to ensure that our country is safe in the future from the wrecking ball of economic catastrophe that affected us for so long that we still bear the consequences. The reason why I do my best, with the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform, year by year, to make money available to local authorities is so that social and public housing can be made available in greater numbers to meet the human need that the Deputy refers to. I can see signs of that beginning to happen. I can see it in Tullamore where I visited new housing some months ago. In Waterford new accommodation is being made available there through the city council. In my constituency I see Dublin City Council is completing a variety of housing projects including refurbishing existing accommodation and getting rid of voids. That might not give a direct answer to the family crying in the Deputy's office but it is trying to help families like them elsewhere in the city. I see this happening with my own eyes. I see the local authority housing completion figures which are not going up at the speed I want and are not delivering homes at the speed which I would like but they are still significantly increasing year after year. That is to respond to all the human need that the Deputy refers to for families and our citizens who are not in a position to afford the empty private accommodation that I began my answer to him with. That collectively is what I say to the different issues the Deputy is referring to. When I knock on doors in my constituency and I meet people I do my best to offer them support in their individual circumstances but then I have to make the case in the round for what we are trying to do overall and make the case that over time, continuing with this approach will help their family and their son or daughter who is worried they cannot afford their rent.

Do I look back and worry or wonder what could have been done differently and what could have made a difference? Of course I do, all the time. I would not be human if I did not do that. I look back and ask could we have increased investment in housing by more. I always assessed where we are with these tax policies that are the source of such debate and discussion that I have to make the case for all the time. I cannot look back at every decision I have made and always be confident that every decision had the impact that I wanted but I can say that I made every decision, not with the aim of trying to increase house prices but with trying to get more homes built in our country. That is what I have tried to do over the last number of years.

Deputy Doherty made some points. I will begin with a political point and end with a non-political point. When he was referring to Deputy Durkan a moment ago, he imagined what an atmosphere must be like in the Fine Gael parliamentary party. At a Sinn Féin parliamentary party, do they ever sit around and look at each other and just wonder how they will deliver all of this? Do they ever wonder, when their social welfare spokesperson has gone out and made commitments to spend more and more money on social welfare, when Deputy Ó Broin has gone out and said that it will go out and build more and more houses and spend more money on it, and when every one of Deputy Doherty's Front Bench colleagues says the answer to all of our challenges is that they will spend more money and that they will find the money to do it, does Deputy Doherty or his party ever wonder if it can do all this and where will it find the money to do it all? Maybe when the Deputy looks across at people like me - I hope the Deputy does not do this because I think he knows me for long enough but I suspect most of his party does - and Deputy Durkan and say the only difference is that they care more than we do. Of course, that is not the way that governments work. If more money was the answer to everything, and if I could get all of that money all of the time, then many of the difficulties we have would be easily fixed. Does Deputy Doherty ever wonder or do the Sinn Féin parliamentary party meetings ever grapple with the reality of all the promises they are making to spend more money? Does it ask where it will get it from or how it is going to do it? This is not lecturing the Deputy but if he does think it is lecturing, he has a long two years ahead of him because we need to have this debate and not just about my track record, which I am up for a debate on and I am engaging here this evening, but also on what is the alternative.

I am not saying there is no alternative; I do not buy that and I have never accepted the TINA argument but I am saying that some of the alternative proposals that the Deputy is putting forward will make things worse. That is my genuine assessment. If I look at the different budgets that the Deputy put forward, the way he has squared it all off is by saying that it will not run a surplus, it will not put money in a national reserve fund and it will spend the money we have. But if we had done that we would not have come out of the Covid crisis in the way we have. Had we implemented all the policies that the Deputy has advocated for, which is spending all of the money that is available at any given time, on the advent of a downturn in the global economy we would not have the buffers to be able to do it. That is not a lecture.