Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I congratulate Deputy Pearse Doherty on being able to say what he just said with a straight face. It requires a great deal of conviction and commitment. I like him because he is a very nice fellow, but he has been speaking a lot of rubbish. What he failed to recognise when he quoted the period from 2006 to 2008 and the availability of finance in the country, and it should be clear to all and sundry who have listened to the debate since then, was that the period from 2002 to 2008 was the peak of a boom when money was flowing from the trees and one Minister said the Government had so much money it did not need it. These are not my words but those of a Minister at the time.

The Deputy compared this era with the era the Government inherited, when there was no money anywhere, not even for the essential needs of the country and its people, the entire economy had imploded and we were the laughing stock of the world. Nobody was coming to our aid and saying we were great guys. If what Deputy Pearse Doherty and others have said is to be taken seriously, we should not have been speaking about the number of houses that were built during that period, because they were short of what was required given the building boom that was taking place in the country. It was an appalling dereliction of duty that after a building boom we now have a shortage of houses never known before in the history of the State.

While I fully understand and appreciate that the Opposition wants to avail of every opportunity to show the Government in a poor light, surely somebody on that side of the House has a little bit of cop on and might come forward and honestly say the Government that took over in 2011 had no money or support to get money anywhere, had a broken and derelict banking system and a derelict economy with thousands of people leaving the country on a daily basis. This era is being compared with the boom period before it. Let us be serious about this. There comes a time when we say things that either we mean or we know they are wrong.

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