Jerry Buttimer (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

Ar dtús báire, cuirim fáilte roimh an Aire. I welcome the Minister.

This Bill is, as we all know, very important. It is one that we should all support and collaboratively and collectively work together on, irrespective of ideology. Like Senator Malcolm Byrne, I have no hang up in encouraging development, be it private or public. We need the Construction Federation of Ireland. We need developers. In the old world, we called them builders who built houses and who knew what to do. Let us get back to doing that.

This is an important debate because, as I have said, the housing crisis will be solved by a compendium of public and private and by planning reform, as well as by empowering, kick-starting and incentivising, but also instructing, the local authorities that they must build, and we must tackle the issue of supply and affordability. There is no silver bullet. There is no panacea.

Senator Warfield said we were in government for ten years. We can go back and parse through the Sinn Féin record in government in the North for 14 years, if the Senator wants to, but that will not build a single house.

What we must do is implement the four measures in this Bill around the issues of the local authority affordable purchase scheme, the cost rental measure, the Land Development Agency, the affordable purchase shared equity scheme or, as Senator Cummins rightly said, the €75 million scheme, as well as the increase in the provision of Part V from 10% to 20%.

The Minister and I know each other a long time. Deputy Darragh O'Brien is a straight-shooter. The Deputy is a tough man on the field but he is a man who gets things done. The Minister's legacy in politics, irrespective of what happens before or during, will be his tenure here. I wish the Minister well and will support him in every step of the way.

The media people who say that were the Minister to come into the Fine Gael Parliamentary Party meeting on Wednesday, it would be like the O.K. Corral, are wrong. It will not be because we are interested in solving the housing crisis. We will not be up on Hill 16 waving a flag and shouting "Come on" or whatever. We will say, "Let us do it together." It is not about sloganeering or electioneering; it is about working. It is about getting boots on the ground and getting concrete and blocks put together.

All of us in our lives have been told of and aspired to home ownership. That is the Irish model and mentality. Unfortunately, that is where a generation has been left behind. That is why we must try to get back to it.

As the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment rightly said on Thursday last, 65% to 70% of citizens own their own home. We, in Fine Gael, are the party of home ownership whether one likes it or not. Senator Boylan can laugh and giggle and make all the faces she wants to. That is what we are as a party.