Michael Healy-Rae (Kerry, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I would not expect the Minister to agree with me because I am right. Builders small and large and developers large and small are needed to fix the problem. It is not the people in government or in opposition talking and talking who will do anything good. However, we need to make the policies. We need to get the policies right. What we have done is put regulation on regulation and red tape on red tape to make it impossible for people to build and make it sensible to do so.

It is like doing away with bedsits. If bedsits in Dublin or any other part of Ireland were up to a proper standard and were affordable for people to live in for a period of time, what would be wrong with them? Absolutely nothing. People realise that now after doing away with them in the first instance.

Mistakes were made in the past but now we have to move on. I say to the Minister, Deputy Ryan, the Minister for Housing, Local Government and Heritage, and everybody in government that without a functioning property industry, they will not have a proper, functioning economy.

We have to get over and realise that wrong things were done by politicians and developers in the past but we now have to listen to and work with the people who are in that industry for us to solve this problem for once and for all. In regard to us to be ashamed of-----

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