Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

There are places where there is no public land and in those places the land cost impacts on the price of affordable housing. It is not that affordable housing will only be built on public land. It will also require the acquisition of land in some cases and it may be built on private land as well.

I will go back to the NAMA portfolio, which was not mentioned by the Deputy. It is the crucial point that he left out. Why would somebody leave the crucial point out of one's argument? The crucial point about the NAMA portfolio, properties and land is that they were all held against borrowings. In order to pay down those borrowings the land was sold off. If the land had not been sold off those borrowings would have fallen onto the taxpayer, the Exchequer and the public balance sheet.

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