Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I am acting in the best interests of citizens. What always motivates me, as I am sure is the case with the Deputy, is what the long-term best thing is for our country. The only reason I put the kind of focus I do on economic indicators such as where we are with bond yields, interest rates and so on is to give our country the chance to try to create the resources to deal with the kind of difficulty I know our citizens face because I represent them, just as does the Deputy Doherty. While he is correct to make the point that capital expenditure decreased for many years, I will make two points. First, when €10 billion was being spent in the past, it was buying things of poor value to our country. We should and must move away from asking how we can match a level of expenditure that, even at that time, many in the Oireachtas felt was not delivering good value for the citizen. What we must do is look at how we can get best value for the taxpayer while increasing expenditure.

Regarding housing and all the progress we need to make there - and I know we need to make progress - of course, what the Deputy's point did not acknowledge is that 80 citizens per day are now being given solutions to their housing difficulty, whether that be through use of payments available through our social welfare system or new homes being offered to people. This is happening as a result of decisions that were made in recent years too. While we have much more difficulty we need to deal with, if it were not for the change in our economic circumstances I would not even have the ability to allocate this additional funding.

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