The Government was accused of failing to deal effectively with the housing crisis because "the house-building industry is Fianna Fail's commercial wing, and they have been reluctant to intervene in the interests of the house-buyer".

In a private members' motion led by the Labour Party, its environment spokesman, Mr Eamon Gilmore, said the crisis demanded strong intervention by the State in the interests of social justice and the common good. It was time to adopt the housing measures which Labour had advocated for a long time.

The debate, which continues tonight, was continuously marked by tit-for-tat accusations about who was to blame for the current crisis. The Minister of State for the Environment, Mr Danny Wallace, said the Government had adopted an effective multi-faceted approach to the problem and he accused Labour of "hypocrisy".

Labour was calling for the provision of 50,000 local authority houses, ail but was "quite capable of going back to their own local authority areas and opposing individual developments on the ground".

Fine Gael's housing spokesman, Mr Brian Hayes, said the market was so out of control that another set of measures to stop soaring prices would be required in 2001 and beyond.