Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I fundamentally disagree with what the Minister has said. I can understand that this is his logic but the State makes commitments to invest in capital infrastructure on numerous occasions and we do not point to a funding stream. If we decide to build a metro, how much will it cost? It will cost billions. Are we going to introduce a levy on everybody who uses a train? It does not make sense. This is not the way it is done. It is nearly a punishment. The industry caused this so we are going to put a levy on it, which is what happened in terms of insurance. I can understand that logic but the problem is that it is passed on at a time when all public policy should be facing in a different direction, which is reducing housing costs. I do not accept what the Minister said. It is not the case that this happens all the time. Therefore, I will press this amendment to a vote because this levy is the wrong levy. Pushing up house prices in the middle of a housing crisis is not the way to go. We have sat here and spoken technically about numbers and percentages. Some of the numbers are in the billions. During the break, I was talking to a colleague of mine who told me that a nurse has no opportunity to own her home and the circumstances in which she finds herself are dire. This is just one example. When we go back up later on, there will be other cases. I spoke earlier about people in my community who will find themselves homeless. This is the lived reality of thousands of people across the State. Sometimes we can become immune to all of that and the fact that nearly 4,000 children are in emergency accommodation. Some children are thinking about Christmas and "The Late Late Toy Show" but thousands of children are not thinking about that because they have been in emergency accommodation for months and years in some cases. The issue is about creating more housing supply and making it affordable and this goes in the wrong direction.