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

The point I will make is that it is disingenuous to pretend that all these things happened because the Government came into office. That is what the Opposition have said. It has suggested to the public that it is because of the Government that rents went up. Covid-19 came and it was not because the Government was in power. It had nothing to do with it. These things happen in the normal course of events and we have to do what we can to address the issues. That is what the Government is doing.

While I am a critic of a lack of supply of housing - I still am and that is the main issue - everything else has to be a temporary incentive to try to get around the problem of the impact it can have on people who are renting. The supply is the issue. The demand is greater than the supply and it will continue that way for quite a while. We are getting to it, albeit more slowly than we would like, but at least it is beginning to tell.

Some counties have been better than others in producing a response to the housing shortage or housing crisis and making more houses available at this critical time. Others have been less than inventive, but different circumstances prevail in different constituencies. I was at a conference recently where an evaluation was presented of the number houses provided in the entire country, including local authority houses and houses that were not of local authority origin, but were directly available to people on local authority housing lists. I am glad to say that my county did extraordinarily well - not so well in direct build but certainly in the acquisition of houses that were readily available through the various provisions that were made in the Act, which have been very successful. That is a good thing. We need to be more positive in the way we look at the resolution of the situation, which boils down to supply and demand. I did not agree with it in the beginning.

I thought it was way too slow. I am still not convinced that we are accelerating quickly enough in order to deal with the magnitude of the problem but there is evidence that the Government is getting there, slowly but surely, and without causing any other kind of a crisis, which can often happen in responding to a crisis situation. I acknowledge what the Minister and the Government have done and congratulate them on the work they have done so far. It is like a teacher's report. We could say it is not necessarily enough and we must try harder. That is true. We must try harder, and that will continue. I sympathise with the Opposition and the situation that they are in at the moment. They cannot see anything positive at all. You can get treatment for that. On the whole attitude of people-----

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