Micheál Martin (Cork South-Central, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I am always open to new ideas, to concrete and substantive ideas. I was not particularly impressed with what the Labour Party put forward in the general election campaign. Establishing a new national building agency would have only delayed things. It would take years to establish and it is a kind of rowing the clock back to earlier eras and to models that simply would not work now in terms of where we are with regard to house construction models, builders and so on. I do not see people in the construction sector flocking to be employees of a national building agency, not to mention the legislation that would be required to establish it, and so on. The Labour Party lacked conviction and even when I met Deputy Bacik afterwards in the context of formation of government talks, there was no fleshing out of its policies-----

See this speech in context