Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Deputies opposite have accused me of interrupting. There was an unprecedented boom, and I quote a member of the Opposition, but there was very little housing construction during those years when large sums of money flowed around the country and when the housing estates referred to were being built in places where there was no demand for housing. That was because of totally inadequate planning. We are turning that around and beginning to address the housing issue. We have seriously changed the planning system such that what happened in the past will never happen again. I have issued several directives to local authorities which have proposed to build, for example, on flood plains or where there is no housing demand or proposed developments that are not in accordance with proper planning. I intend to continue to do that and to ensure that we do have proper planning, that we build where there is evidence of a demand and a need and that we do not do what was done in the last years of the Celtic tiger when terrible decisions were made and money was not spent where it should have been and unemployment grew. Deputy Halligan referred to unemployment but we are getting unemployment levels down and it is down to an unprecedented level.

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