Joan Burton (Dublin West, Labour) | Oireachtas source

At the time of the budget, I warned the Minister that this would constitute a direct transfer from Fine Gael to builders and developers. It was designed as such and has had the impact that I forecast at the time of the budget. To be honest, at the time the Minister was aided and abetted by Fianna Fáil. Essentially, the Minister is turbo-charging the housing market on an inadequate scale in the context of many builders and developers still being on strike and sitting on large volumes of land. I can understand that the Minister chose to move on this to induce some kind of feel good factor into the housing market. That is the only sense I could make of the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government's strange comments yesterday. It is obvious that one part of his head disagreed with it and the other part, probably in the context of the leadership election, did not want to say anything critical about the serving Minister for Finance.

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