Paul Murphy (Dublin South West, RISE) | Oireachtas source

Did the question of housing come up at the competitiveness summit? It is clearly a major issue in workers being able to have affordable housing somewhere in some sort of achievable commutable distance from their work. It seems that a key issue continues to be the fact that councils are taking public land and selling it off for very low prices to private developers as opposed to having a State construction company able to build social and affordable homes on public land. Last night South Dublin County Council voted, with People Before Profit opposing, to effectively give public land away to a private developer for €100. There will be 88 homes on this site, 18 of which will be social homes. They will say they need to do it because we are reliant on the private developers. Does not all of this prove we need a State construction company, and a rule to say that where we have public land, we need to put public homes on it? That is social housing and genuinely affordable housing, as opposed to this reliance on the market that has got us into the crisis we are in.

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