Éamon Ó Cuív (Galway West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We made another retrograde move in the past 15 years. Again for some reason the system has this absolute hatred of people who own their own houses. They all want us to live in rented flats at the top of things. There would be many different companies charging us massive fees and we would never really own the place where we live. The Government abolished mortgage interest relief. Only that Fianna Fáil saved the relief it would be gone. It is only temporarily reprieved. The death sentence is just commuted, not abolished.

We got rid of the first-time buyer's grant. It is interesting to ask ourselves one simple question. When we had that and when two gardaí, the garda and the nurse, two teachers or whoever could afford to buy a house, often with just one income, did we have a better and more stable society? Did they actually own their houses and was it to the benefit of what we were doing?

I will come back to this another day because it is time we looked fundamentally at things. It is fine to go into the fine print. This country has got some very fundamental decisions wrong. It is time we all looked at them and stopped letting the system run us. We need to start running the system for ourselves.

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