Catherine Connolly (Galway West, Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is not "any tax measure"; it is a tax measure to assist people with the deposit when buying a house in a most serious housing crisis that is getting worse every day. I watched these developments as a councillor locally. I recall exactly when the construction started because we used to get quarterly reports telling us how many houses would be constructed and where. It stopped in 2009. The final column stated: "Construction suspended". From 2009 until a year or two ago, not one single social house was constructed in Galway. There are many reasons for a housing crisis but one of the major ones is the failure of government to be in the middle of the market, balance the market and build social housing - I prefer the phrase "public housing" - on public land. I cannot remember the figure pertaining to the increase under the scheme. A certain price was predicted and it jumped astronomically. The original estimate was €40 million per annum. By January 2021, the cost was €167 million. Then it went up to nearly €500 million, which is the last figure I saw, and higher than that.

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