Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party)

Young people who must pay €375,000 for a three bedroomed home are forced to take a 40-year mortgage. This morning I asked a bank manager to work out the figures based on the house price I gave and he told me that, on a mere 4% constant interest, a person would have to pay a staggering €750,000 before he or she would own the home. If interest rates increase to only 6%, the house buyer would have to pay the even more staggering price of €1 million for a modest home. Young people will be in their 70s and still paying their mortgages. Is it any wonder the Minister for Social and Family Affairs is on a systematic campaign to undermine the entirely human and reasonable expectation that workers should retire at 60 or 65 years of age with a reasonable pension when Government policy on housing is utterly subservient to the capitalist marketplace and workers will be enslaved to the banks into their 70s merely to put a roof over their heads?

Why are there not foot high headlines about the extent of this extortion in the media? Every wing of the establishment is compromised in property speculation.

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