The Minister of State responsible for housing has said property speculators should be "taxed out of existence" as they were out to make "a fast buck" at the expense of those seeking homes.
Noel Ahern told a press conference yesterday that such people "should be playing the commodities market in the London stock exchange on oil or cocoa beans or whatever, rather than with houses".
Mr Ahern was speaking at the publication yesterday of an advice booklet, the Affordable Home Handbook, an event dismissed by Labour as a stunt to distract attention from the Government's failure to meet promises on the issue.
The Green Party said it showed "considerable neck" for the Government to publish such a booklet because of its record on affordable housing.
Mr Ahern noted that despite the fact that up to 90,000 homes could be built this year, the cost of housing was not coming down.
Suggesting that investors and speculators were driving price rises, he said: "Some form of taxation would help as output alone does not seem to keep prices down.
"There are people buying land in the short term, not to build on it but to sit on it for a few years before selling on to some developer. There are people buying houses and apartments off the plans and never taking the keys but selling on the contract.
"I don't think those people are giving any added value to the whole issue. I personally would like to see those people taxed out of existence."
The advice booklet, prepared jointly by the Affordable Homes Partnership for Greater Dublin and the Department of the Environment, explains in question and answer format the Government's affordable housing scheme; who is eligible; how it operates; and how to apply.
Labour's environment spokesman Eamon Gilmore said the event was a smokescreen to hide "the failure of the Government to honour its promises or deliver on its commitments" in regard to affordable housing.
"The fact is that after almost 10 years of Fianna Fáil-PD government families on low and middle incomes find it more difficult than ever to acquire a home of their own. If the Government was as effective in delivering houses as it is in producing information booklets then we would not be experiencing the housing crisis we currently have."
He said that under the Sustaining Progress Agreement, concluded in 2003, 10,000 affordable houses were to be built. "By the Government's own figures less than 2,000 of these were delivered, but in reality far fewer were completed because of double counting on the part of the Department of the Environment."
He said that in July 2003 the Taoiseach had told an Ictu conference in Tralee that the Government had agreed to the immediate release of land at four sites for use for affordable housing.
"Three years on not a single block - never mind a completed house - has been delivered on any of these four sites. Only a change of direction and a change of government can deliver the policies to ensure that hard-working couples can again afford their own homes in their own communities."
Green Party spokesman Ciarán Cuffe said the Taoiseach was "the leader of a Government that has failed miserably to deliver on affordable housing".
"If the Taoiseach had read Focus Ireland's Building for Inclusion report - published at the end of last month - he would be aware that his Government's decision to water down Part V of the Planning and Development Act, 2000, has cost the country an estimated 14,000 affordable units."
The Affordable Home Handbook is available at all local authorities or can be downloaded on www.affordablehome.ie