Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not know what part of that the Deputy could disagree with but given his practice, I am sure he will find something to disagree with. The fundamental project for this Government is to ensure that anybody who wants to rent, purchase or mortgage a house is able to do so at an affordable rate according to their income. That is the fundamental premise behind what we are trying to do and it is the backdrop of every policy and initiative that has been instigated in the past number of months and that this country will continue to support. The local authorities are starting to gear up and we can see in our towns and villages that houses are starting to be built, maybe not as quickly as the Deputy or I would like, but they are starting. The percentage increases year on year from last year to this are enormous. The figures are still small but they will grow larger. So far this year, in excess of 14,000 homes have been built. It is nowhere close to what is needed but it is a hell of a lot more than was built last year and the year before.

I reiterate that we have no ideological issue with building any homes. There are a tremendous numbers of people in my party, not just in the parliamentary party, but in towns and villages up and down the country who grew up in county council houses and have no ideology against them whatsoever. I am proud of the community that I came from, which gave me the fundamental beliefs that I hold today. We will build and we will solve the housing crisis. We will not sit on Opposition benches and come up with unworkable and unrealistic claptrap. We will support local authorities and private developers and we will fundamentally open up publicly owned lands to ensure that people such as couples of all ages can afford to buy or rent in the areas that they want to.

See this speech in context