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

I am glad to have an opportunity to speak for a few minutes about this review. It is timely to have a look back and a look forward. We need to look back on the journey we have travelled over the past six or seven years or more and, on the basis of our performance, look forward as to how we see our society developing in the future. There are vast differences in this regard. Seven or eight years ago, the economy was in free fall, emigration was rife, unemployment was growing rapidly - up to 15% - we had no ability to borrow, no borrowing capacity and no borrowing rating and we were shunned all over the world as being unstable and unnecessary to a great extent in the financial markets. We have come through that now and the time has come to look again at how we might develop the next phase of the recovery. The people of this country and the previous Government and its leadership achieved a great deal. It was not easy. If anyone thinks it was, all we have to do is think back over the issues that have affected us all over the past seven or eight years.

Housing is a very important point at present and growing in importance daily. As I have said recently and many times previously, this issue did not originate in the past couple of years. It originated nearly 20 years ago when the housing policy was changed, and until such time as that policy is changed back to what it was, whereby the local authorities build houses directly for people or provide private sites to people who want to build affordable houses, we will not solve the problem. It cannot be done. I assure those who think it can that like the Acting Chairman, I have been around a while. Moreover, I have been in this House for a long time too and I have yet to see how this problem can be solved other than in the old-fashioned way, that is, by building more houses. This would have two responses: it would meet the urgent need for housing and deal with homelessness and would also stabilise house prices. As long as a person must borrow something like four or five times his or her annual income in order to buy a house, it is not sustainable. It cannot be done. I have spent some time, as I am sure the Acting Chairman has, in the courts over the past seven or eight years explaining exactly that: it is unsustainable now by virtue of today's criteria and those loans were unsustainable at the time, regardless of what criteria were applied. We have an issue here.

We need to look again at investment in infrastructure. This is a very good and positive thing. Now is the time to do it. We must look at those parts of the country to which the Celtic tiger did not come. Many people seem to think rural Ireland has only been visited by the aftermath of the recession but there was a division beforehand. The division came at the peak of the Celtic tiger. What about all the people who said during that period that they never saw the Celtic tiger or had any experience of it? This applied to both urban and rural settings and this is very much a moot point still. We need to be absolutely certain that what we do from here on in is manageable, affordable and soundly based and that we do not repeat the same mistakes. If we play our cards well, carefully and cautiously and do not repeat the mistakes of the past, get ahead of ourselves and become overly ambitious, we will be on the right track.

The health services, the administration of justice and housing are three critical issues, along with road and rail infrastructure. For one reason or another, some of which is our own fault - everyone's fault - it appears to be fashionable now to dumb down the quality of the health services and claim that everyone is to blame for everything that goes wrong. Many of the things that are happening and do go wrong are manageable and can be averted before they happen. There is no use complaining about the lack of a particular aspect of services in an area. If the services already there are closed down for whatever reason and if we do not use them, and this is hugely important, there is no use replicating the structures to deliver those services. We need to deal with this as a matter of urgency.

We need also to look at the administration of justice and ask ourselves where we are really going in this country. Do we have respect for justice anymore? Do we have respect for authority in this country? Do we have respect for the members of the Garda, the enforcers of the law, at all times? Given some of the things I have seen in this House and outside it, I must raise some questions. We have seen things happen that would indicate to me that we do not have respect for these things and that is detrimental to where we are going.

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