Brendan Howlin (Wexford, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I am very glad that was acknowledged. Deputy Murphy said we could have built houses in 2011. In 2011, the country was on its knees. Our indebtedness was 30% of GDP, which was higher than that of Zimbabwe. That was a nominal figure. The actual figure, even taking out the bank debt, was 11% of GDP. We had no money to spend. Deputy Murphy thinks we could borrow the money from the European Investment Bank. I met the European Investment Bank at the time. I brought its representatives to Dublin. The very first meeting they ever had outside Luxembourg was in Dublin at my invitation. They would provide us with a loan but we could not borrow money because we were required to reduce our indebtedness from 11% of GDP to 3% or we would have no money to pay for health, social welfare and everything else. The first thing we need in the House is honesty about how we address and solve these issues. We have a habit of always trying to resolve the last crisis after the fact. The economy crashed in 2008 due to reckless bank lending and a property bubble. For most of the time we were in government, there was no property market. Nobody could tell one what was the value of houses because there was no market for them. Nobody was building houses because the builders had collapsed. The notion that it was a normal time merits revisiting given that we were barely clinging to economic survival. Let us be honest. It is nice and comfortable for people to make jibes, but if we are going to resolve the real crisis we now face, we must act collectively.

My colleague, Deputy Jan O'Sullivan, has worked on many fine Bills in the housing area. This Bill contains a set of measures which would provide real support to the most embattled cohort of people right now, namely, those in the rental sector. They are genuinely being crucified across the country. Rent hikes have been monumental over the past five years or so. Rents are now higher than they were at the peak of the boom in 2007 and 2008. As my colleague, Deputy Joan Burton, has said it is perversely the case that the cost of rent is more oppressive than mortgages at current rates. If there were only houses for people to buy and they could convert what they were paying in rent into mortgages, they would be better off and in the process of acquiring their own homes and settling their circumstances forever more. That is the reality.

Figures revealed by RTÉ today show that half of new homes listed as local authority builds were bought directly from a builder or developer. Half of these houses were bought. I heard the Minister of State say that is the way it should be and that we are doing everything. However, he is saying, in essence, that the few bob the State has is now being used to compete with-----

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