Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

While I am very fond of my two colleagues who are very likeable guys, although I do not like them to the extent that I want to go over and hug them or anything like that, I want to point out that they are misguided, and that is the unfortunate thing. They mean well and want to do the right thing, as we all do, but they are misguided in looking at the issue from one aspect and one point of view only, which is to achieve taxation in the case of People Before Profit. The ultimate answer to that party is that people will have to work for nothing in the future, and if we are going to employ people, we will have to say that all who want to work for nothing should join us and we will give them plenty of work. That is the way it will works, but it does not work. It is unrealistic. I fully appreciate the points are being made in an earnest effort to help out, but if you are still misguided, you are still misguided. No disrespect at all to the Deputies, whom I am very fond of, and I agree with many things they say from time to time, but I do not agree with them now.

There is much to be gained and we need to do this now. We need to utilise the people who have the money and who can borrow it on the markets for almost nothing, which we should not forget, and encourage them to point that money in our direction, not to make a killing on it, but to provide the funds we require to do the building that we need, which is even greater than has been assessed at the present time.

I remember mentioning at that all-party housing committee a few years ago that a person would need more than €100,000 a year to buy a house. I said that all those years ago because of the way things were looking, because that is what had happened before. We did not get ahead of it at that time.

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