Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 5 December 2013

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform

Fiscal Assessment Report November 2013: Discussion with Irish Fiscal Advisory Council

3:15 pm

Photo of Richard Boyd BarrettRichard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

In my remaining two or three minutes, I will focus on that. At the heart of the Irish crisis, the European crisis and the global crisis was the issue of property becoming an area of speculation. I am seriously worried that what Professor McHale describes is a commentary on a boom-bust economy where we merely see which way it goes and where there are already signs that this area is becoming one for speculation again where there is no rational plan to balance supply and demand. My idea would be to build social housing which would put the unemployed back to work, provide affordable housing and regulate the market because it would keep prices from getting out of control. Instead, the Government is cutting back on all of those areas and handing over property, which was at the heart of the crisis, to big corporate speculators. That is terrifying. Would the fiscal advisory council be deeply concerned about that?