Dáil debates

Wednesday, 10 May 2006

10:30 am

Photo of Joe HigginsJoe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

There is a more long-standing order of the House covering Leaders' Questions.

Is the Government trying to add to the agony of the tens of thousands of young workers who are priced out of the housing market? The Minister for Social and Family Affairs announced a study, which will take several months, on some kind of mortgage support for them, during which the price of a house will have increased a further €10,000 and created even more problems for them. Is the Minister cynically constructing an alibi to defend himself from a belt from the Comptroller and Audit General over shovelling around €400 million of taxpayers' money to speculator landlords in rent supplements, instead of building social and affordable houses for the 50,000 families who are priced out the market and the tens of thousands of other young workers who cannot afford to buy a house?

Is it not striking that in nine years of his party being in Government, any time he has feebly examined the rocketing house prices, he has never once pointed at the real source of the problem, namely, the land speculator, the profiteering developer and the financial institution? The Government's policies have bloated them further rather than cut them off at the legs.

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