Paschal Donohoe (Dublin Central, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I know I am right. I am wary of making points with absolute certainty but the point I am making to the Deputy is that the State is directly involved in building homes. It does so through local authorities. The majority of those 11,938 homes would have been built directly by local authorities, which is the State. That is the argument I am making to the Deputy. To suggest the State is not involved in directly building homes would be wrong. Even if the State body to which the Deputy referred were to be established, it would still have to buy concrete and employ people at rates that are comparable to those in the private sector because, otherwise, those people would not work for the State. It may well be that the organisation for which the Deputy is making the case would not make a profit and there would be no marketing, as the Deputy has acknowledged, but those aspects are only a comparatively small part of the cost of building a home at the moment. The State will have to deal with all of the other costs that any private sector company is dealing with at the moment and that our local authorities are currently dealing with.

As I said at the beginning, I thank all Deputies for their recognition of the importance of passing this legislation. I acknowledge this debate has been comparatively short, given the amount of money involved in this Bill. I emphasise again that all the different strands of this funding have been debated elsewhere within the Oireachtas. I thank Deputies for their co-operation.

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