Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

Senator Fitzpatrick has covered most of my points. Taking a segment of housing out of affordability will add to the crisis. Every one of us who has been on a local authority knows that local authorities are buying social houses on the open market every year and families are living in such houses. Every year, each local authority is given funding to go out and buy houses for social housing. This is doing the same. It is taking houses on the private market and making them available for affordable housing. It is another way of supplying affordable housing for people who are crying out to own their own homes so I do not support the amendment.