Joe Higgins (Dublin West, Socialist Party) | Oireachtas source

We wish to excise from this Bill further interference from the bureaucracy of the European Union with regard to how issues like social housing should be addressed by excluding this stricture the Government puts in the Bill in regard to borrowing for social housing. What is wrong with borrowing money to build homes for people who desperately need them? In particular, what is wrong with that when it provides a stream of income from rent and, in the case of affordable homes being built by the State or by public authorities and sold to workers on ordinary wages, their mortgage payments? It is a stream of income that would actually meet whatever was borrowed so what is the issue here? Why does the Government stricture itself in this regard? What is wrong with borrowing money to build social or affordable homes, particularly when there would be a stream of income coming back from them? Why should any Irish Government limit itself because of ideological input from the European Union, the whole thrust of whose policy is to try to get housing provision totally in the grips of the privatised sector?

Could the Minister of State answer that specific question?

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