Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

The Tánaiste never fails to surprise me. The language he is coming out with today is that it is not as bad as it was 14 years ago. Does he know where ordinary people are at in his constituency and in Dublin Bay South? Does he know what people are being asked to pay to buy their own home? There is a serious problem and the problem is not, as he is suggesting, bigger mortgages. The problem relates to what the ESRI, the Central Bank, Sinn Féin and many others have been saying. The issue is not about stimulating more demand, which will push up house prices. The demand is there; listen to ordinary people. It is about dealing with the supply. The ESRI is saying we should double capital investment from where it is today. The Tánaiste should not skirt around the issue.

This is a man-made problem. Indeed, the Tánaiste's Government has created it. Because it decided not to build houses over the past decade in the volume that was required, we have a situation, as the Central Bank points out, where the imbalance between supply and demand is pushing up house prices and the Central Bank is telling homeowners that this is going to continue.

I again ask the Tánaiste whether he will commit to doubling capital investment in this year's budget and giving that relief to renters by freezing rents for the next three years.

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