I am glad, Sir, you gave me this opportunity to correct the misrepresentation made here today and yesterday by the Minister for Local Government of what I was alleged to have said in relation to housing in the course of the adjournment debate before the Christmas recess. Yesterday I was told that the Minister for Local Government, in the course of replying to supplementary questions in connection with housing, said that I said in the course of that debate that there were too many local authority houses being built. That was reported to me but I took no action in the belief that a misrepresentation was made in the course of exchanges in the cut and thrust across the House. Today I was listening in my room on the monitor and I heard the Minister for Local Government, again in reply to supplementary questions, say that I had stated in the course of the adjournment debate before Christmas that there were too many local authority houses being built.
It was suggested by Members from this side that the statement was taken by the Minister out of its context. The Minister replied—I quote him exactly as I heard it—that "Deputy Lynch said there were too many local authority houses being built, full stop." Those were his exact words. I want, with your permission, to quote in its full context what I said on that occasion. I quote from the Official Report of the 17th December, 1975, column 1788. I said as follows:
We undertook in our housing programme, published in the late 'sixties and early 'seventies, that by 1972-73 we would have reached 25,000 houses output, which was reached. There was no necessity whatever for a crash programme as the Minister for Local Government announced. What has gone wrong is that there are too many local authority houses being built as against houses owned by the people which is what most Irish people aspire to. Local authorities are becoming, and have been for many years, the biggest landlords in the country.
That is not a very desirable trend, especially when there is the ideal of self-sufficiency and independence so strong in the Irish character. That ideal is being depressed by this Government having failed to provide adequate grants for young people seeking houses for the first time. They——
the young people——
are inevitably driven back to the local authorities, even against their will in many cases, to give them reasonable shelter in their early married years. It is a wrong trend, it should be discouraged and it is one that this Government are deliberately responsible for by their failure to increase to a realistic level grants for house building and loans available from local authorities for a similar purpose.
That indicates that the Minister's statement misrepresented what I said. The Minister is the most sensitive Member of this House when his escutcheon is in any way assailed. I hope now he will have the good grace to withdraw that misrepresentation and apologise for it.
