Michael McCarthy (Labour)

I welcome the Minister of State to the House. I do not agree with his statement that the Government has a proud record on housing. In the ten years the parties in Government have been in office, the position regarding housing has gone out of control. The number of people, particularly young people, who cannot afford to buy a house at today's prices and whose financial position does not enable them to qualify for a mortgage at one end of the spectrum and at the other end there is the spiralling increase in house prices. This has created a niche, which is unfortunate. We are familiar with other systems in place, and the Minister of State referred to the cutting back in the rent allowance scheme, which was a retrograde step. It affects people living in accommodation in respect of which a subvention was paid by the State. That subvention represented an important segment of the finance that allowed such people to live in rented accommodation while waiting to be housed by a local authority