Jim Walsh (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Last week, I made reference to the pending Central Bank changes in relation to mortgages. Since then, these changes have been announced. While I can understand and, to some extent, welcome these changes, they will be an impediment to many people in accessing and affording a home. I ask the Leader to arrange for an early and open ended debate on public and private housing, during which we could endeavour to come up with ideas that could be inputted into a policy formulation that might assist in the current crisis. Affordability of housing should be a priority for Government.

I am not sure the somewhat crude mechanism of the Central Bank is the way to do it. I remember arguing strenuously in 2001, at a time when people were having difficulty in purchasing their own houses, that we should revert to a system that had been in place in the 1980s and perhaps the 1970s. Under that system, one had to obtain a certificate of reasonable value from the Department when disposing of a house. A sophisticated regionally based system could be effective in controlling house prices and relate the lending rate to the certificate of reasonable value as opposed to the market value.

I am appalled that not just the Government but also its precedessor stopped building local authority houses. That was a major mistake and is now being seen as such. We started to lease houses over 20 years and did all sorts of ingenious things which really only served to kick the can down the road. We now have a situation in my own county where people in Wexford town have been waiting for ten years on the waiting list before they have a prospect of being able to access a local authority house. Unless there is capital expenditure on a significant local authority building programme, this crisis will not be resolved. If we look back, we will see that in the 1930s, when Éamon de Valera first came to power and in the middle of an economic war, many of the local authority houses in which many Members were probably reared were built. There is no reason we could not give a fillip to the construction industry in our various areas. There is huge construction unemployment in Wexford. We could also make provision in order that at least one arm of housing policy was being directed and pursued.