Pat Casey (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I want to make a brief statement on housing. We are in a housing crisis and we have to look at every avenue and opportunity to deliver housing. Part of the reality is we must deal with the private sector. In Wicklow, in the areas of high demand for housing, there is not one piece of local authority land.The local authority has no choice but to work with developers in order to deliver social and affordable homes. Nobody knows which is the better option. In fact, we might be getting better value for money from the private sector than we would from building houses at local authority level. We have reports on that from years ago stating that it is more beneficial to buy homes from the private sector. In the context of the housing crisis, we cannot rule out any option that is on the table to deliver homes for people and deliver affordable and social homes.