Aideen Hayden (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I will try to rush through as quickly as I can. It is important to say it is more than a debate we can have here today to find what wrong with the housing market in this country. I believe history matters a lot. We need to look at a scenario where we go back to what worked for this country in the past.

I do not favour a situation where we go back to a scenario where we have such tight banking regulation that people would need to have their first communion money before they could get a loan from a bank. Ireland is and always has been a nation of homeowners. Some 25% of the people in this country became homeowners through the local authority sector. There is a significant body of evidence that shows that older people in this country are not poorer than they could be because they own their own homes.

What Senator Barrett has presented is part of what I would suggest is a rich tapestry of options and I thank him very much for producing it in the House. I commend it to the Minister and ask him to give it his serious consideration.