Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

-----in Cork city and county. Let us put this in perspective and not have the ochón agus the ochón. There are challenges. We understand that. We had a banking system that collapsed. People could not get money. Those in the construction sector could not get people to work and they could not be financed. As the Minister of State said, the local authorities have to employ people. I also agree with Senator Boyhan that a group should be added to the housing summit, namely, our city and county councillors, who would bring a wealth of experience and ideas to the table.

Let us reflect on what we are doing. We are rebuilding Ireland from the depths of the worst economic recession we ever had. I remind Members that the troika was here. Nobody would give us money. Senator Humphreys was a Minister of State at that time and was in government for three or four years. He knew what it was like. He was in government with my party. We took decisions that we would never take in normal peacetime, as the former Tánaiste, Eamon Gilmore, said, but we were at war economically. We rebuilt the country socially out of the ashes of the legacies of the past. We had to then to rebuild the infrastructure in terms of our roads and buildings. I remember in the summer of 2011 there was not a crane to be seen in Cork city until John Cleary took a brave move to build in Mahon. I am sorry if I am boring Senator Devine but those are the facts.