John Paul Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I was particularly struck by Deputy Wallace's contribution. I rarely agree with him on anything, but I would say that most of what he said tonight was on the money, if Deputies will pardon the unfortunate expression. He spoke about the importance of the creation of a national investment bank, or some similar initiative, to fund housing. In fairness, some of the Sinn Féin speakers mentioned the offer that has been made by the Irish League of Credit Unions. I agree that we need to do something imaginative to tackle this crisis. When I listened to the contributions made by Fianna Fáil speakers earlier, I thought to myself that they have learned nothing from what has happened over the last ten years. Our economic collapse was intrinsically linked to construction. Housing construction was just a part of that; commercial construction was the biggest part of it.

I listened to new Fianna Fáil Deputies criticising NAMA, which was established by the late Brian Lenihan specifically to be independent of politics and government, and advocating that politics and government should somehow get involved in it. They criticised the independence of the Central Bank in establishing rules for deposits. One thing that struck me during Deputy Wallace's contribution earlier was the support he expressed for those rules. The failure to require a certain level of deposits was a glaring factor in the spiralling house prices that led up to the crisis. It is remarkable that Fianna Fáil Deputies have spoken this evening about pursuing a policy of increasing the Part V requirement to 25% once more.

Deputy Mick Wallace is correct that if this were increased to 20% it would remove the incentive for private developers to get involved in construction again. Many of my friends, who like me are in their mid to late thirties at this stage, are tradespeople and are now living in Australia, New Zealand and Canada because of the collapse in our housing construction market. That the people who drove that sector off the cliff are now putting forward proposals that were part of the problem in the first instance beggars belief. Some of the other proposals put forward tonight are, at least, different. I heard Deputy Griffin's comments in regard to what he called the "rental renovation scheme". I also heard Deputy Sean Fleming's contribution earlier, in which he spoke about vacant units in Portlaoise and Monasterevin. Deputies McGuinness and Funchion would be familiar with Kilkenny and, in particular, the area stretching from Graiguenamanagh to Callan, including the city. There are very few habitable vacant units there, whether private or public.

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